#well its not my fault she has such fun shapes (it is directly my fault)

[razzafrazzle]

lil piece i did entirely with the polyline tool!!!

[image description: a drawing of an original character named eris done in a very geometric style. eris is a thin, pale-skinned man with red buzzcut hair and pitch black demon horns and a tail. she has pointy yellow teeth and blank white eyes. she is wearing a pink and white off-shoulder top, a gold crown, a pink spiked collar, pink spiked cuffs on each wrist, a gold necklace with a transgender symbol-shaped pendant, and many other pieces of gold jewelry and piercings all over he body. she has one hand doing a piece sign and the other hung down limply, with both hands having pink painted nails. she is surrounded by doodles of stars and a rainbow, and the entire drawing is contained within a comic speech bubble. the background is transparent. end id]

[darkjanet2]

Sonic Adventure 2: Sonadow

Chapter 14: The Truth About Maria Robotnik

Inside the Space Colony ARK Sonic, Tails, and Amy roaming around the ship’s halls, they couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that something was off about their journey. It wasn’t as if they were forgetting something or someone important.

"This place is old and abandoned," said Amy.

"This place was shut down about 50 years ago because of a terrible accident," Tails said. "The first Bernoulli spherical space colony called ARK. When it was operational, it was filled with technology that could take us anywhere in the universe. I read a report that it was a perfect sphere."

"It sure seemed like it!" said Amy.

There's no time to waste before Eggman fires that weapon again," Sonic said. "We need to hurry! Let's destroy that cannon!"

"Right!" said Tails as he typed the keyboard on his computer. He typed several codes into an access terminal until the large computer screen showed one image of a massive gun mounted atop the ARK's main hull.

"Someone designed that weapon in a way that it is impervious to attacks from the outside. Its defense shields are super strong and will only be weakened once fired upon. The only way to defeat the shield is to hit it directly," said Tails as he opened the briefcase there was a topaz gem inside.

"Isn't that a Choas Emerald?" asked Amy.

"Yes, actually, it's a fake one that I created after researching the real Emerald. It has the same properties as the real emerald, but it has been enhanced with my ability to manipulate the energy from my Chaos Emeralds. So we're going to have to be very careful about this mission since Eggman will likely suspect something is amiss at the base. After all, that's where I first made this device," said Tails.

Tails gave the fake Emerald to Sonic, "Here. You go find the control room, and I'll find the power supply and destroy it, okay?"

Sonic nodded, "So the plan is, we'll switch the Choas Emeralds when the machine has stopped, yeah?"

Tails nodded as they both led the way leaving Amy behind.

"There they go again. They always have fun and leave me here all alone! I really never understand boys," she sighed as she headed toward the main hall.

*Meanwhile*

After surviving the spaceship crash, Knuckles glided through the ARK, then landed on the building and the crash sequence was completed. He sighed in relief.

"That was a close call. I guess I got separated from the others for a little while…"He then heard the sound of footsteps approaching him. He quickly turned around and faced the enemy. The figure that approached him was a white bat that wore a pink chest plate shaped like a heart, black leather pants, white gloves with pink tips, and white boots with pink hearts on the toes. She wore blue shadows with long lashes and pink lipstick.

"Well, look who finally joined the party," said Rouge, "I was starting to wonder when you'd show up."

"You again," said Knuckles annoyed.

Rouge smiled, "Come on now, don't be such a sourpuss. After all, isn't it your fault we ended up in trouble?" she asked, holding up the shards of Master Emerald. "With these, I have collected the shards of Emeralds." Knuckles didn't say anything, so Rouge continued. "So what do you say? Want some?"

"Fine, if it's what you want," Knuckles replied. "But I won't give you what I'm holding unless you give the shards to me, bat girl."

Rouge smirked, "Oh, you wish!"

She charged at the echidna. He swiftly sidestepped her attack and used a kick to knock her onto her back. He held out his hand as he bent down towards her, but she quickly grabbed it and flipped herself over. She ran straight at the echidna. Knuckles stood up and kicked her across the floor. Then he caught her as she rolled to a stop next to him. As she got up, she tried to punch him in the face, but Knuckles blocked. He lifted her up by the neck and tossed her aside. He jumped high into the air and tried to punch her down, but she dodged by sticking her foot to the floor. She attempted to throw a punch, but Knuckles blocked that too. They continued to dodge each other's attempts to attack each other. At last, Rouge managed to catch Knuckles in an overhead uppercut. Knuckles crashed right into the wall. He growled.

*Meanwhile*

Amy walked through the corridor, scanning every nook and cranny. She sighed, "I still can't believe this Sonic left me here. Why would he just abandon me?!" Amy muttered angrily as she continued forward.

Suddenly, she noticed the secret laboratory door in front of her. She opened the door and entered the lab, it was a high-tech lab. A workbench covered almost the entire length of the left side wall. An assortment of scientific tools and machinery littered the workspace. Amy looked around the room and found an array of monitors on various parts of the walls. There were screens showing the interior structure of the ARK.

"Wow, that's really neat!" Amy said. She approached the computer desk and stared at the large monitor screen as it displayed the exterior structure of the ship. She tapped the keyboard and the screen changed colors as a 3D hologram appeared. The image showed the ARK exterior and its inner structure. A series of lines connected the two ships. Each line terminated at the same point. One end of a line was connected with the mainframe, which was attached to the control panel. There was a password box on the screen.

"I gotta know what the password is, or else this'll never work!" said Amy aloud. She began searching around the desk until she found a piece of paper in the notebook. The password was Maria.

Amy raised her eyebrow, "Maria? That's a pretty common name, but who named the kid, anyway? Oh well. I have better things to think about anyway." She began typing the password into the computer system. The screen had unlocked and there was a wallpaper of Prof. Gerald Robotnik, Shadow, and a human girl named Maria.

"Who is this girl? Is her name Maria in the password?" wondered Amy as she examined the picture closer.

"She looks pretty. I wonder what happened to Maria 50 years ago?" thought Amy as she went to search through the information on Maria. Her eyes found the DVD under the paper on the desk. She then proceeded to the DVD into the optical disc drive. The video appeared on the screen and she began to watch.

Gerald was on the video footage as it played. The man was standing in front of an empty table that looked like it hadn't been used in a while.

"I'm Professor Gerald Robotnik, the greatest scientist ever to grace the earth," said the professor. He turned around and looked directly at the camera. "And this project that will change the world, is ready to begin. Now all that is left to do is gather the necessary data to complete our project, and we shall finally reach the ultimate form of reality!"

"I have created the Space Colony ARK. This vessel will contain the most advanced spacecraft technology available in the known cosmos. From the moment it leaves Earth's atmosphere, the crew will become the masters of the universe. The ARK is capable of traveling faster than light. In fact, the speed of light may even exceed light speed. We are capable of crossing the void without fear."

Just then the lab door slid open, and Amy gasped and turned to who it was. It was Tails who entered the lab, she sighed in relief.

"You scared the heck out of me, Tails," said Amy.

"Sorry. What did you find?" asked Tails.

"I found a video diary of Prof. Gerald Robotnik talking about how he created the ARK 50 years ago. And there was a story about a girl named Maria," said Amy.

"Maria?" asked Tails.

"Yeah, and you might want to watch it," she resumed the video.

Professor Gerald was speaking in front of the camera, "That day, my granddaughter Maria was diagnosed with NIDS. It is commonly known as Neuro-Immune Deficiency Syndrome. She has been battling the disease for months. But it seems that she has finally conquered the illness and is on her way to recovery. However, there is no doubt that the reason why I've developed the serum that can reverse these conditions is due to the research done by myself. Unfortunately, there is no cure for the disease. I only hope that one day, I can create Project Shadow as her treatment for her condition. Until then, she will need constant supervision over her health, and hopefully, soon she will be able to recover."

"So he created Shadow as her treatment? That doesn't make sense," said Amy.

"How does the NIDS help?" asked Tails.

"I don't know," she shrugged.

In the next part of the video, Prof. Gerald Robotnik was taken to Prison Island and was chained up in a chair, and there was a scribbling calculation on the wall. Amy and Tails gasped in horror.

"This is insane! How you could do something like that?!" yelled Prof. Gereald enraged. "Don't you realize what kind of destruction you're causing!?"

"Of course not. We know you created a dangerous weapon that threatens to wipe out humanity," replied Leader G.U.N. army. "We are going to make you pay for your crimes against mankind. We must destroy it."

"Destroy it?! You must be out of your mind! I am a scientist! Not a killer!" said the professor as he struggled against the chains holding him prisoner.

"What is the difference between a killer and a scientist?!" asked the G.U.N army, "Your kind has always been obsessed with science, with science alone."

"There is nothing wrong with being interested in science! You killed my granddaughter without mercy!" cried the professor.

Amy and Tails gasped in shock. "They killed his granddaughter?" whispered Tails.

"That's so cruel. She was just a kid!" Amy cried in protest.

"I plan to give you a taste of revenge. Once all seven Chaos Emeralds are collected, the colony will destroy the planet! All of you ungrateful humans, who took everything away from me will feel loss and despair!" yelled Gerald in rage on the screen.

"Is there anything else you want to say?" asked the leader.

Gerald hung his head down and spoke quietly, "No..."

The soldier cocked his rifle, "Ready!"

A gunshot rang out and Gerald fell to the ground with a bullet protruding through his head, causing Amy to cover her mouth while Tails shut his eyes tight. The screen went static after a few moments and the screen went black.

Amy slowly laid her hands down from her mouth. "I can't believe they did that... he was executed," she stated sadly as tears formed in her eyes.

"It was horrible...." said Tails softly.

"Should we tell Sonic about this?" asked Amy.

"I'm not sure, but--"

Eggman barged into the room shouting, "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU TWO THINK YOU'RE DOING IN HERE?!" he shouted causing Amy and Tails to scream. He stopped in his tracks and said, "What are you kids doing in here?"

*Meanwhile at the Control Room*

Sonic found the Choas Emeralds on the Eclipse Canon. He took out the fake Emerald and turned on the walkie-talkie.

"Tails, I found the Control Room and Choas Emeralds. Should I put the fake emerald on this now?" Sonic asked yet there was no reply.

"Tails, are you there?" asked Sonic worriedly.

'What's he doing right now?" thought Sonic.

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

My Top Ten Overlooked Movies With Female Leads In No Particular Order

Note: When you see this emoji (⚠️) I will be talking about things people may find triggering, which are spoilery more often then not. I mention things that I think may count as triggers so that people with them will be aware before going in to watch any of these.

Edited: 3/16/21

Hanna (2011)

So, before I get into why you should watch this movie, I just want to take a moment to say why it's near and dear to my heart. Growing up as a queer kid in the early 2000s, seeing portrayals of people like or similar to myself on anything was rare at best. It was mostly in more "adult" movies or shows that my parents would occasionally let me watch with them that I'd see any lgbtq+ rep at all. Often times they were either walking stereotypes, designed to be buried, evil, or all three.

Then here comes this PG-13 action thriller with a wonderfully written main female lead who, at the time, was close to my age, and who got to kiss another girl (her very first friend, Sophie) on screen in an extremely tender and heartwarming scene. To say the least, it was a life changing moment for me personally.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, Hanna is a suspenseful movie about a child super-soldier named, you guessed it, Hanna (played by Saoirse Ronan) and her adoptive (?) father Erik Heller (played by Eric Bana) exiting the snowy and isolated wilderness of their home and taking on the shadowy CIA operative, Marissa Wiegler (played by Cate Blanchette) who wants Erik dead and Hanna for herself for mysterious reasons.

It also has an amazing soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers, great action scenes, and it has an over arching fairytale motif, which I'm always a sucker for.

⚠️ Mild blood effects, some painful looking strikes, various character deaths, and child endangerment all feature in this film. However, given its PG-13 rating, a majority of viewers are presumably able to handle this one. Still, be aware of these going in.

Sidenote: It's recently gotten a TV adaptation on Amazon TV, although I have not watched it, and do not know if Hanna and Sophie's romantic/semi-romantic relationship has transferred over.

A Simple Favor

A Simple Favor is a "black-comedy mystery thriller" centered entirely around the relationship between two mothers, the reclusive, rich, mysterious, and regal Emily (played by Blake Lively), and the local recently widowed but plucky mommy blogger, Stephanie (played by Anna Kendrick). When Emily suddenly goes missing, Stephanie takes it upon herself to find out what happened to her new best friend.

It's a fantastic and entertaining movie throughout, with fun, flawed and interesting characters. The relationship between the two female leads is also implied to be at least somewhat romantic in nature, and they even share a kiss.

⚠️ The only major warnings I can think of is that the movie contains an instance of incest and one of the main plotlines revolves around child abuse, although both of these potentially triggering topics are not connected to each other, so there is thankfully no csa going on.

Edit: I legitimately forgot there was drug use in this movie until now. So, yeah, if that's a trigger, be careful of that.

I Am Mother

I became mildly obsessed with this movie when it came out. I Am Mother is a sci-fi film that centers entirely around a cast of two woman, and a female-adjacent robot who is brought to life on screen with absolutely amazing practical effects.

The plot is such, after an extinction-level event, a lone robot known only as Mother tasks herself with replenishing the human race via artifical means. She begins with the film's main protagonist, Daughter. Years go by as Mother raises her human child and the two prepare for Daughter's first sibling (a brother) to be born. However, on Daughter's 16th birthday, the arrival of an outsider known only as Woman shakes Daughter's entire world view. She begins to question Mother's very nature, as well as what's really going on outside the bunker she and her caretaker call home.

⚠️ This movie features child endangerment and reference to child death.

Lilo and Stitch

When I decided to add a single Disney film to this list I initially thought it was going to be hard but almost immediately my brain went to Lilo and Stitch, and specifically about the relationship between Lilo and Nani.

On the surface, this film is about a lonely little girl accidentally adopting a fugitive alien creature as a "dog," but underneath that the story is also about two orphaned sisters and the older sister's attempts to not let social services tear them apart by stepping up as the younger sister's primary guardian. Despite its seemingly goofy premise, Lilo and Stitch has a very emotional and thoughtful center. It's little wonder how this movie managed to spawn an entire franchise.

Despite the franchise it spawned (or possibly because of it), I often find that Lilo and Stitch is overlooked and many people only remember it for the "little girl adopts an alien as a pet" portion of its plot, and I very rarely see it on people's top 10 Disney lists.

⚠️ This movie could be potentially triggering to people who were separated from their siblings or other family members due to social service intervention. There's also a bit of child endangerment, including a scene where Lilo and Stitch both almost drown.

Nausicaä and the Valley of the Wind

Unlike the above entry, I did struggle a little bit with picking a single Studio Ghibli film. Most media of the Ghibli catalogue have strong, well-written, unique, and interesting female leads so selecting just one seemed like quite the task.

However, I eventually settled on this particular film. In recent months, Princess Nausicaä has become my absolute favorite Ghibli protagonist and I'm absolutely enchanted by the world she lives in.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world overun by giant insects and under threat of a toxic forest and its poisoness spores, Nausicaä must try to protect the Valley of the Wind from invaders as she also tries to understand the science behind the toxic forest and attempts to bridge the gap between the insects and the humans.

For those who have never seen the film, I think Nausicaä's personality can best be described as being similar to OT Luke Skywalker. Both are caring, compassionate, and gentle souls who are able to see the best in nearly anyone or anything. She's an absolutely enthralling protagonist and after rewatching the film again for the first time in well over a decade she has easily become one of my all time favorite protagonists.

Whenever I see people talk about Ghibli films, they rarely mention this one, and when they do mention it, it's often in passing. In my opinion it's a must watch.

⚠️ This movie contains some blood, and the folks who either don't like insects or who have entomophobia may not appreciate the giant bugs running about throughout the movie. (Although most insects do not directly relate to real life bugs, and are fantasy creatures).

A Silent Voice

A Silent Voice is an animated movie adaptation of a manga of the same name. While I've never had the pleasure to read the manga, the movie is phenomenal. It covers topics such a bullying, living in the world with a disability, the desire for atonement, social anxiety, and depression in a well thought out manner that ties itself together through the progression of the relationship between its two leads, Shoya and Shouko. It's also beautifully animated. Although very popular among anime viewers, I've noticed that it's often overlooked by people who watch little to no anime. So I suppose this is me urging non-anime viewers to give this film a chance.

⚠️ As mentioned above, the movie deals with bullying, anxiety, and depression (with this last one including suicidal thoughts and behaviour). If discussion of those topics are triggering to you, than you may want to proceed with caution or skip this movie all together.

In This Corner of The World

Another manga adaptation, this one taking place during WWII-era Japan. In This Corner of The World follows the life of a civilian Japanese woman, Suzu Urano, as she navigates simply living and her new marriage as the wartime invades nearly all aspects of everyday life. I think this movie is a good representation of what it must be like to be living as civilian in a country at war where the fight is sometimes fought on one's own soil. It was also an interesting look into pre-50s Japanese culture in my opinion. It's also beautifully animated featuring an art style I don't see often.

Despite it being well known among anime fans, I never really see it be brought up, even among said anime fans themselves.

Side note: I've seen many WWII dramas centering around civilians but they've almost always been about American or UK civilians. This was the first movie I'd seen that features the perspective of a Japanese civilain.

⚠️ Features the death of a child and limb loss. There's also a disturbing scene featuring a victim of one of the atomic bombs near the end.

Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki

This film follows Hana, a Japan-native woman who fell in love with a magical shape-shifting wolf-man, and her trials with raising their children, who can also magically shape-shift into wolves, on her own. It's a very heartfelt movie about a mother's love and the struggles of doing right by your children when you have limited resources to actively guide and care for them. All the characters feel unique and alive in my opinion. Also, the animation is so good that my sister and I initially mistook it for a Ghibli film.

Again, like the previous two anime entries, I don't see it ever brought up outside of anime circles.

⚠️ There's some child endangerment present in the film, although none of it is the fault of Hana as far as I can remember.

Roman Holiday

Roman Holiday is about the fictional Princess Ann (played by Audrey Hepburn), who while on a whirlwind tour of Europe, finally reaches her breaking point over having her entire life be one big schedule and all her words and actions being rehearsed. In the spur of the moment, she runs away in hopes of experiencing what life is like for other women. Unfortunately, she was previously given a sedative, meaning she doesn't get too far before it takes effect. Fortunately, she is found by the kind reporter Joe Bradley (played by Gregory Peck). Believing her to be drunk and unable to get an address from her (because she has none) he ends up taking her home for safety's sake and allows her to sleep off her suppose drunken stupor. The next day, he realizes who she is, and decides to take her on a fun sight seeing trip across Rome in hopes of getting the big scoop. Along the way, they begin to fall for each other.

This is my favorite black and white, old romance film. I think the relationship between the main characters is absolutely beautiful and I have a lot of fun watching it.

⚠️ I'm not entirely sure what kind of warning this film would need. However, it was released in 1953, so values dissonance will probably be at play for many viewers to at least some extent. For example, early in the film Ann is given sedation drugs by her doctor for her behavior, something that is very unlikely to happen today. Also, Mr Bradley deciding to take Ann home to keep her safe rather than call the police or an ambulance is a very pre-90s decision in my opinion.

[funny-house]

huhu u got me to watch opal the other day since u keep talking abt it and im glad bc i Really Enjoyed It but !! anyways , i saw u mention mirror man doing makeup for someone and i keep thinking about it so Thoughts Incoming sorry in advance lmao. i think he would like to do claires makeup (and teach her abt it in general) when she gets a bit older,, both bc it seems like a legitimate hobby he would enjoy (i imagine if he werent Like That he probably could have been a makeup artist or something similar!) and bc he would like to ‘prettify’ her a bit.

and ah well,,, a lot of parents Like Him sometimes try 2 make their child a carbon copy of themselves or of an image they enjoy so if he grew to like claire more or already does like her enough for that (or just, wants things to revolve around him More) hed try to nudge things in that direction. and in his own way i think He might think hes doing something good, he knows when he was her age he would have killed to have a parent so eager to help him learn makeup and stuff but. claire isnt him. she probably isnt even interested in it at all but shes kinda desperate for Nice Moments and also doesnt wanna risk making him angry so she goes along with it. she always has her head in the clouds so all the things hes saying is too much at once but shes trying to comprehend it,,,,,

nd he keeps giggling at her for how awkwardly she moves her arm when putting on foundation and blush nd gets kind of annoyed with her for repeatedly flinching when he tries to help her with mascara nd teases her a bit for trying to taste the lip gloss (and keeps pointing out a flaw or two on her face “well, youve always had a sort of weird shaped face but youve always had the cutest little smile, its like Mine :)”) but they do it !! together !!! and nothing (that) bad happened !!!!!! so claire is happy,,,,,,,,,,, until that inevitably opens the gates of him trying to pick out what she wears for her and “””suggesting””” hairstyles for her and getting manipulative and even flatout Angry when she doesnt do what he wants her to (bc even when things Seem like theyre about claire they Are Not, its what He wants for her , in the end its still all about him) but, ive rambled enough to you already <:o) sorry for talking so much i just wanted to chat a bit abt opal with you !!!! hope ur doing well hehe . and im sorry this is rambly nd probably incomprehensible i just did a lot of work hkehri

ohhhhhhhh !!! FIRST  I am super glad that all my constant rambling about this man has allowed you to go watch Jack Stauber’s awesome little short, it’s really good and deserves all the support !!!

also i totally appreciate you wanting to share your thoughts with me ;u;

AND I TOTALLY AGREE  the whole idea of him projecting himself onto her, trying to take over her, I think that is so fitting for the short itself tbh, because it’s a reflection ( mirrors, hehe ) of what the mother wants from Claire as well. The thing that terrified Claire near the end is the mother reaching to hold onto her, specifically after the mom said that she was going to become just like her. The idea of her becoming her parents? it terrifies her, clearly!!

And Mirror Man, he is what they call a “archetypal narcissistic abuser”, in my eyes at least,  and it would be really really common to see someone like that not only be so controlling and self absorbed that they treat their child like a decoration to themselves, but also use that child, especially as they get old enough to have opinions on the situation, to turn them against their partner-- such as.... the mom

so picture this

Claire is like 10-12, and she’s bright and she’s got a good heart but she’s WELL and truly Affected by the years of being brought up in that ridiculously toxic hell hole-- I mean house no idea if the grandpa would live that long uhhh in his state, but even if he does, he’s still very sick, disabled, and senile and he isn’t going to be much help. and Claire, she’s starting to have Opinions,, on how things are running around here,,      but in swoops Mirror Dad

He’s like........ it’s your mother’s fault. Oh, absolutely, have you seen her? I mean look at her, she’s disgusting. she’s a drug addict, she’s a drunk, she’s ugly, she’s the reason you feel like this-- and maybe some of that is understandable, i mean she’s a real mess of a mom, no mistake, but hey

Nobody’s going to tell Claire who made her that way! Nobody’s going to tell her Mirror Dad was the one who trapped her in an unloving, possibly violent relationship, with a kid, and ripped apart every inch of her self worth !!!

Nope. she just sees the aftermath. So mirror dad...... turns claire on her. And she starts to side with him on things and she starts to even kinda talk like him maybe even....... learns how to do that dark and scary insecurity voice of his and one day She walks by the.... Reflection Chamber and Mirror Man is there in that way He Always Is in that seat he always sits in, and he says something very very odd to her!   he raises a finger and curls it in and says    come sit on my lap you haven’t gotten too big to sit on my lap have you?? come here!! and i mean Claire is still very very uncomfortable even being near him, and this feels like a trap, but i mean she can’t just say no, and there’s a part of her that’s kinda hoping... maybe he really is trying to be nice. and so she does and she sits with her but you’ll notice he is never looking directly at her. Even as she’s approaching literally right in his line of sight, he stares straight into her reflection, never her face.  It’s like she’s not even real unless she’s in those mirrors.

And he tells her he wants to do her makeup! yay! how fun! and he tells her to close her eyes and pout her lips and try not to flinch when the sculpting starts or he’ll use his deep voice-- and how he’s going to finally FIX her. Goody!! then maybe the constant barrage of insults and negs and criticisms will stop!! (p.s. they wouldn’t have )

And so she opens her eyes..... and the face of her abuser is looking right back. It’s her face. Or it used to be-- now it’s literally his and it’s hideous-- it does not AT ALL belong on that body, and the only thing left of her is her big shiny eyes

and she  S C R E A M S that way Claire does,,,

but this time, loud enough to crack the mirrors, and stun the dad just long enough for him not to catch her in his hands when she leaps off his lap and books it for the attic the attic, the view of the billboard with the same worn out, not updated ad for Opal’s in the window. She locks the door, it doesn’t take long for mirror man to come banging on it, telling her she’s ungrateful, she doesn’t deserve what little she has, taking back every nice thing he ever said, etc,,,

and Opal just starts clawing off the makeup/clay/whatever from her face in the mirror’s glass reflection, putting her hair back into the pigtails her father said made her look stupid

but she isn’t Opal, she’s changed, she’s aged, but Opal-- she’s always the same!! happy!! cared for!! and what is she supposed to be under the makeup? huh? Who is she besides the abuse she’s put through, that billboard and what it sells to her?  she doesn’t know! nobody does nobody ever bothered to get to know what it even means to be Claire.

[mallorycastle]

In her haste to reach the beach and the sweet escape she senses at hand, @tamyrawilliams​ finds herself snared in a net. Nearby, @no-gambit​ and Mallory respond to her calls for help, but like all things involving Mallory and Tamyra, it soon comes to sharp words. 

After setting off the flares with Aurélie in hopes that the ship would see, Tamyra wanted to find some kind of higher ground to see when the rescue would come from the ship, she could know which part of the beach to run towards as fast as possible. SHe wasn't a good runner, but she would run as fast as she possibly could once she knew rescue was coming.

Going up the tree wasn't a problem, she got up relatively quickly, and when after about five minutes, she saw some kind of light flare up from the ship and keep up, she was certain it had to be the people on the ship signaling back. They took their time with it, but it only mattered that they acknowledged the flares and they were coming. They were coming.

She needed to get to the beach. Damn waiting for people coming, there was a sign, she needed to go.

Going down didn't go as planned, though, and Tamyra ended up slipping and falling - and it wasn't enough that she hit her shoulder, no, she also activated a fucking trap and the next thing she knew, she was hanging in a net, no idea how she got down. "Shit. Fuck. Who the hell--" but it didn't matter. Not now. Not now, when she was so close to getting out. Instead she started yelling, "HELP! SOMEBODY, PLEASE HELP!"

《❀》

Magnolia trailed Mallory close enough to see, at least, her vague shape in the gloom. She forced the wind to carry every minute sound to her down to their very breaths to compensate for the fog, to patch together the terrain. She was about to protest once more, to urge them to turn back towards the more populated areas because surely this was just another trick of the island, one meant to trap and to maim and haven’t they been hurt enough lately, when she heard it. A cry, familiar in cadence.

No grabbed Mallory’s wrist, already hauling her towards the plea. “Someone-“ she knew it was Tamyra, but she doubted Mallory would be so easy to pull forth if she knew-“Needs help. See? This is why we don’t fuck off into the island bullshit for no reason, Mal.”

Mallory can't help thinking this is the creepiest the island has been. Ghosts are one thing - she can pretend it's a hallucination, for one, but this impenetrable fog? She squints, hand flailing about in front of her. Her fingers brush against a tree in the same moment a scream, low and far, reaches her ears. "What the--" Her swear turns into a yelp as No touches her wrist. "Hey, we were doing fine, we used the buddy system. It's not my fault someone else didn't."

Despite her retort, she doesn't protest as No hauls her towards the noise. "Weren't you hear for the ghosts? Isn't running towards screaming a bad thing?" she murmurs, gaze darting around. They aren't quite in the jungle, or she doesn't think so at least. Mallory swishes water around in front of them, hoping to clear the fog, but it does nothing. So much for finding this quick and easy. "Ugh. Okay, fine. Hello? Who's out there?"

《❀》

Somebody was out there and listening, and Tamyra only cared about that. The voice that called back even sounded familiar and she didn't even think about who it was, didn't even occur to her that the person who was asking her who she was could have been Mallory, she was just happy to hear a familiar voice. "It's me," very telling, Tamyra, very telling. "I got caught in a net trap, please help me!"

She looked around, wondering if she could do anything to speed up the process of getting down, but she couldn't see anything, and figured that her best chance was making sure whoever was out there found her anyway. "Here! Come, follow my voice, it's Tamy--" No appeared among the mist and Tamyra breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank god it's you, I was afraid that nobody was going to hear me and--" and then she noticed Mallory Castle and she stopped in the middle of her sentence. "What is she doing here?"

《❀》

Rumor had it that net traps had become the second most dangerous thing on the island, directly after human stupidity. No had to choke on a snort rather than let Tamyra hear her exasperated laugh, while resolutely ignoring Mal’s retort.

She slid her hand from Mal’s wrist to her hand as she ventured within sight of Tamyra, huffing in relief to find her relatively unharmed. “Tam, I heard you—“ she began only to roll her eyes. The dramatics between them were getting tiresome. “Being next to me, that’s what she’s doing, which is much more sensible than whatever you are doing.” Magnolia had left the machete that usually graced her hip behind that morning. Stupid, she thought as she fiddled with her belt, but she hadn’t exactly anticipated this. “We might have to actually untie you from the tree…” she mused, ready to act rather than dawdle.

《❀》

Someone cursed her. It's the only reasonable explanation for why Mallory is peering up at Tamyra, contemplating how to fetch her down from a net. She considers leaving her there, eyes narrowed, and it's only No's hand stilling her from the sharp retort. Instead, she says idly: "We followed the yellow brick road to see who was screaming at the end of it. We better watch out, a house will fall on our heads next. That's how the movie goes, right?" Her eyes flicker up, but it's just fog, fog, and more fog. No house in sight.

She shakes her head, mildly disappointed. "Ah, well, you're the boss, No. I guess I wouldn't want a cursed house." And letting Tamyra get squished by one is a surefire way to get a haunted house. Mallory wanders to the tree trunk, trying to figure out whether this is Luke's contraption or another person's. His, at least, she knows how to untie without too much fuss. "Hm, I think this is some castaways, I've certainly never seen this style before."

《❀》

"It's not like I wanted get trapped here! It's not like I saw the net trap and intentionally walked into it thinking, 'oh, how fun will it be to spend way too much time today wasting it in a net when we can get saved any moment now'," Tamyra rolled her eyes at No. Despite her annoyance, though, she was glad to see No there. At least she could trust her to make sure Mallory wasn't doing anything unacceptable.

She ignored Mallory's dig (wicked witch of the west? really?), but followed the woman with her eyes to make sure Mal wouldn't do anything to jeopardize her getting down from here. "No, please check the trap too, I don't want her to try to keep me up here. And really, if you can just cut me down, I'm good with that, too, I don't get if I get hurt or something. Just get me down as fast as you guys can so I can get back to the beach." She looked to her side - most of the beach was hidden behind the tree canopy at this point, but she still remembered the light. "Have you guys seen that light as well?"

《❀》

Magnolia sighed, pitying and worried. She knew already that Tamyra was likely amongst the most desperate at this moment, the most invested in this phantom ship being real. The island was just taunting them now with a treat on a stick, as it always had. “I care if you get hurt, and Mallory has it in hand. I’ll try to slow your descent so you don’t just crash.” To punctuate her plan, she pulled a stout updraft around them, rustling their hair. It could at least cushion her inevitable fall from the net.

“I have,” she said slowly. The light, the ship, the fog all spelled strife. “Mal have you? Tam, it’s just the island. Or it’s a ship that’ll never reach the shore, we’ve seen plenty of those." Perhaps leaving Tamyra in the net would honestly be safer for her. She wouldn't be amongst the fools trying to swim to the light. “It’s just a trick, you have to realize that by now.”

As Mallory inspected the knots, No looked to her. “I don’t have anything sharp on me. Can’t you untie it? We can try to find a rock to fray it apart.”

《❀》

Mallory huffs, crouching. She prods the knot for a loose edge, eyes rolling at Tamyra's worry. "I'm not going to leave you in the tree, you'd probably scream like a banshee until our ears bleed and I'm squeamish around blood. Or it'll scare the boat off before my brother is on." She can't have that, not until Harvey is on its deck. Then it can sail off into the sunset with no one else and she won't care.

Has she? She halts, frowning. "I think so. I try not to pay attention until its responding to us, or closer than this one. Seems a bit strange that we've got this fog and this ship, doesn't it?" She asks, skeptical. "I don't think it's real."

She lets out a noise of triumph as she finds the edge of the knot, pulling on it and letting the knot unravel. When she finishes unwinding it, Tamyra only lurches down a few inches. Her lips purse in annoyance. Her knot is gone, but another one is beneath it. "This was built to be annoying, wasn't it? Look, it's knotted in like four spots. Let's try a rock, this is going to take too long to untie. Or we can try to freeze it and hit it hard enough to break. Dunno if we'll find a sharp enough rock in this mess."

《❀》

No's reassurnce only worked slightly because it was coming from No, and Tamyra was sure she wouldn't let Mallory do anything unacceptable. "Screaming like a banshee around you might not even be a bad idea... Maybe you'd actually listen to that," Tamyra pondered. Their insistence on the ship not being real, though, that was confusing and annoying in that moment. Why did nobody believe it was real? That it could be and was real? "If you ask me, the fog is the island. It realized that ship penetrated its defenses and is about to get us out of here, so it's trying to stop it as much as it possibly can. Can't exactly throw ghosts at the ghost, right? It would just go right through. Hence the fog."

She let out a small shriek when the net lurched down a few inches and grabbed onto the net itself, but she was still hanging high and the rope was starting to hurt. "A little warning next time?!" she snapped towards Mallory before turning to No. "Please, look at what she's doing. Can't you see how reckless she is? Not even a word of warning, anything."

Tamyra tilted her head, squinted her eyes at the trap, but she couldn't see it properly from up here. "You could always try to steal a rock... Oh, sorry, you don't steal unimportant items like rocks, only shiny, pretty, important stuff, hmm?" She couldn't help the jab as she reached up to touch her necklace just for a moment. "I think freezing it is your best option. And possibly the fastest, I vote for that one."

《❀》

Magnolia shook her head throughout Tamyra’s musings. The ship could not be real, it had to be a phantasmic tease, a trick, a cruel torturous image meant solely to prey on people like Tamyra. “If the island wanted to stop that ship, it would have sunk it or sent a monster after it or any number of things. Fog is just fuck with us, just as that horn and the light and the ship is. Come on, Tam, you’re smarter then this.”

Her power surged as Tam dropped, but she let it flit away into the smog when nothing else happened. “You did ask to be let down as fast as possible,” No shot back. “Mallory is the reckless one? At least she’s not desperate to get fall into the island’s trap. I trust her and-“ Magnolia looked towards her, though the fog showed only her silhouette and said pointedly-“I trust her not to do anything stupid, right?”

No groaned and leaned back on her heels. She saw the necklace, and felt the barbed implication, but now was not the time. She poked Tam in the side through the netting. “For fuck’s sake, the both of you. Enough of your idiotic feud. Mal, I have a bottle of water, can you use it to freeze it?”

《❀》

Sympathy wells in Mallory against her will. For all her anger with Tamyra - and she has enough to fly off the island using steam power - she doesn't feel right ripping the rug out from underneath her. But then she remembers the last time she spoke and her sympathy fades. "Yes, yes, I won't do anything stupid. Scout's honor. And I was a scout, before you doubt me."

She glares at Tamyra. "At least rocks are most useful than pretty shiny--" Mallory stops, but only because No's frustration boils over. She huffs, but doesn't respond except to wiggle her fingers for the bottle. "How good are you at freezing things?" She asks Tamyra, upending the water over the vine and freezing it with a touch. "Need it to stay frozen until we hack through it, but I can't do both." Freezing isn't her strong suit, even if she can manage well enough if she concentrates. "No, maybe you should hit it. You have the arms for it - or the attunement if you're feeling fancy."

《❀》

No had good points, but Tamyra didn't want to hear them, didn't really want to listen enough to start thinking about it and let it all sink in. In her mind, everything she thought made sense and No was just being skeptical because she's given up so long ago. So she didn't say anything, just huffed out some air and kept looking at what Mallory was doing.

No's promise that Mallory wasn't going to do anything had more weight than Mallory's - really, if she was lying about the scout thing, she was still say she was, so that didn't reassure anything for Tamyra. She let out a yelp at No's poking, and she wanted to tell No that it wasn't actually an idiotic feud, but Mallory stopped dead in her sentence and damn if she was going to seem the childish one out of the two of them.

"If you freeze, and No hits, you two should be good to go, I can't really reach that rope from here," Tamyra said, even twisting her arms somewhat to show that it was at the wrong angle for her. In reality, she really wasn't good with freezing and had too much pride admitting it in the moment. "And if you keep holding onto the rop while you keep it frozen, you can hold it after it's broken and let me down a bit more gentle." Another horn came from the beach, and Tamyra closed her eyes, her heart beating fast. "Just please, guys, hurry, I want to-- we need to... Please."

《❀》

Magnolia narrowed her eyes between the two of them, armed with another reprimand if need be. It had been decades, they ought to have used the semblance of sense the both of them possessed to settle this years ago.

She handed the water to Mal without further comment before stooping and running her hands through the short grass and dirt until she found a sizable rock. “Okay,” she murmured, bouncing it in her hand until she gripped it well. “Mal, freeze when you can. Tam, get your head on straight.” She waited, poised to hit the knot.

《❀》

Mallory sighs. "I was really hoping you were someone who could freeze from a distance like Matthew or Prince Charming, but oh well. We all have our faults." Or many of them, as the case may be for some of them. She taps the water with her pinky, sliding it along the length of the rope with the edge of her finger, wary of being anywhere close to where No will hit it.

"This fog is... not helping with a talent I'm not so good at anyway, so try not to break any of my fingers. These are my money makers. But, go, hit it." And as the rock strikes, shattering the ice and the vine with it, Mallory lets out a shriek of surprise as the vines unwind with a whoosh. It unravels and unravels, the net flying towards the ground, and instinctively she grabs the nearest edge, yanking on the edges of it, heedless of the burn against her palms.

《❀》

Tamyra grabbed onto the net - as if that would actually save her or help her from the fall while she watched as Mallory froze the rope and then No broke it. She fully expected Mallory to hold onto the rop and keep her up and then slowly release down. Maybe release her fast from the last bit at the end, but not instead she could only feel the pull of gravity in her stomach and then she was falling down. She completely missed the part when Mallory tried to grab onto the rope and tried to hold her upright, she just registered the hit to the ground and she groaned, pain surging through her back.

"Shit," she groaned and remained there for several moments before she snapped. "Was that really necessary, Mallory? I know you hate me and want to fuck with me, but did you really have to just let me drop down like this when you could have just let me down easily?"

《❀》

Too intent with aiming and not accidentally hitting Mallory’s hands No could only conjure the slightest of winds to try and ease Tam’s descent and winced when she heard the thud. She saw the rope burns on the former’s hands before she heard the latter’s words.

Magnolia hissed, her patience expended. “Enough, Tamyra,” she growled low and furious and imposing through the gloom. “Both of you, enough. This is needless, idiotic bullshit. You two think this island needs help torturing you? You want to be the tools of this place now as well?” With gentle hands, if not gentle words, No reached for Mal, turning her hands over to fuss over them. “Use the rest of the water for that.”

Her capacity to tut like a mother hen went just as quickly as it came and she turned to haul Tamyra roughly to her feet. “Listen to me, I don’t give a shit about your resentment for each other or whatever relief you get for sticking and poking and provoking the other. You want the selfish reason I want you to stop, too? I love you both, you hurt each other you’re hurting me. Do you want that? Do you want to help the island fuck with me too?” She paused, letting it rest for only a moment and glancing between the two of them, helpless rage alight in her eyes. “Put your useless feud to fucking rest.”

《❀》

Mallory hisses, shaking out her hands and then cradling them. "Oh, go cry me a river, you're fine," she retorts. Then winces as No rounds on them with fiery eyes and equally sharp words. A retort comes to her lips, but No silences her when she grabs her hands. She winces again, but reaches for the rest of the water with little complaint.

"I don't know if it's that easy," Mallory mutters, dumping the water on her hands and holding it in place over her palms. It eases the burn some, but the mark will remain for a day or two longer unless she finds something more fresh. Her eyes land on Tamyra, the same bitter swirl residing there, and she wishes she could swallow it as easily as she once did. "You know I don't want to hurt you," and yet she doesn't know if she can do that. "But this--" she gestures between her and Tamyra, frowning, because looking at Tamyra invokes outrage and useless nostalgia. "I don't think this will change, even if you're the one asking me to let it go. How can I?" She doesn't meet No's eyes, rocking on her feet.

Her heart pounds, and she nods to herself once, before turning around, putting her back to them both. It's the best she can do. "It's best if we just don't interact. You don't fuck with me, I won't fuck with you, Tamyra."

《❀》

No was at her limits, apparently, because suddenly she snapped, telling both of them off (it was a bit of a satisfaction to Tamyra that she wasn't getting all of it, despite how Mallory kept trying to put all of this on her, as if all of this was her fault), but as much as Tamyra loved No, she couldn't agree with her. And she could definitely not just up and forgive Mallory for anything.

To be fair, Mallory did seem to try to catch the rope at least, based on how her hands looked, but Tamyra was too proud to admit that out loud, and she just let out a small huff when Mallory said that she didn't want to hurt her. As if she wasn't the one who crashed their plane. The only reason she didn't say it out loud was because No was there. So, in a way, she was helping, even if just momentarily, and on the surface level. (She was irrational, of course, but she didn't realize that.)

"For once, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but this once I do agree with Mallory. I don't think this will change. I can agree to staying out of your way, I'll be the happiest person if I don't have to deal with you," she addressed Mallory for this, "but that is it, No. And since we're getting out of here today, we won't have to deal with each other much longer anyway." Which only reminded her of what was still happening. "Thank you, for getting me down," maybe it was petty and childish, but she pointedly looked at No for those words, "but I'm going to the beach now to see if anything changed and if we could start boarding again."

《❀》

"I don't care how you feel right now, just stop feeding the island and being idiots," No snapped. This wasn't a battle she could win and wasn't a war that belonged to her. It was frustrating beyond all belief. Their delusions with each other and their delusions of escape. There was none, they were trapped beside each other whether they liked it or not. "Tamyra," she began, fierce and angry. "Do not do anything idiotic, it is a trick. Nothing more. It will be my turn to shout at you if you fall for it." Magnolia shook her head a final time, spared Mallory a glance to check her hands and gauge if she would follow, and turned to stride towards (hopefully) the populated beach.

[juliafied]

"Sharing a dessert" with Fenhawke please? <3

Thanks for the prompt!! @pedlimwen​ asked me for this one too, so obviously y’all have spoken and I gotta do it! I’m also trying to practice present tense for my writing, so I gave it a shot here. 

ALSO, sorry this is so angsty, for a prompt that seems like it should just be wholesome fluffy fun, this got way too deep...

@dadrunkwriting | AO3

--

It is a curious thing, for Fenris, to be escorting Hawke home. The usually taut muscles of her arms that he often catches himself admiring in battle are soft as candlewax, and almost as warm, as she melts against his side in the long walk up the Hightown stairs. Eyes that usually gleam with a hunter’s aquiline sharpness are now soft and framed with dusky eyelashes; somehow, she has wrapped her arms around his right shoulder, and, knees slightly buckled, is beaming up at him.

“Fenris,” she slurs, corner of her mouth upturned in the way he likes so well. He turns away to smile.

“Mmm.”

“Fenris,” she repeats, elongating the second syllable of his name, and stops afterwards to giggle at herself. “Fenris, you know what would be really good right now?”

An end to these Maker-damned stairs, he thinks, but instead replies, “What?”

“There’s this place—” and at that, in one swift movement, she lets go of his shoulder, turns, and lands her ass quite hard on the step ahead of them. “Ouch,” she whispers softly, so sweetly that he chuckles and cannot stop his heart from swelling. 

“Are you alright?” he asks, sitting down next to her, albeit more gracefully.

“Yeah,” she says, and reproachfully adds, “you know, I’ve had almost an entire bottle of wine.”

Fenris knows. She’s been Champion for all of three weeks, and that means even the burden of working life has not yet made the stingy patrons of the Hanged Man forget to toast Hawke, the city’s saviour. Besides, Fenris knows a thing or two about disinfecting wounds, physical or otherwise, with the harsh sting of alcohol. But he is not a hypocrite, so he helps in the only way he knows how, by staying at her side while the bartender pours another, long past when she should have gone home.

“Good thing, too, otherwise that would have hurt a lot more.”

She leans back to laugh again and Fenris deftly catches her arm to prevent her from dashing the back of her head on the step above. “Good thing I’ve got plenty to cushion my fall.”

Fenris does not want to think about the truth in that, and blinks hard before refocusing.

“You were talking about some place.”

“Oh yeah! Fenris, they have cakes. And crepes, and stuff. Have you ever had a crepe?”

“I cannot say that I have, no.”

A dramatic gasp from Hawke as her eyes open wide, and she pushes, precariously, up from his shoulder to stand. “We gotta go. It’s in Lowtown, and it’s open late!”

Before he can protest, she is flying down the stairs, undone hair streaming behind her, and it is a wonder that she does not fall. He sighs, and looks up: they are squarely in the middle of the massive stairway. So be it, though — Hawke wants crepes.

The shop is indeed open, despite the late hour, and impressively, Hawke manages to order for them. They sit on the stoop of the house next to the creperie, and Hawke contentedly licks the caramel that has run down her fingers. It is in a sort of cone shape, and Fenris can see it is stuffed with some kind of fruit, sprinkled with cinnamon. He smiles at the familiarity of the smell, remembering the apples that Leda had always baked for Satinalia, back in Minrathous. He wonders whether she still does so, now.

Hawke has already torn into the crepe, drunkenness the cousin of impatience, but rather sheepishly brandishes the cornet at him once she sees him looking.

“It’s the apple pie one,” she mumbles, mouth still full. “Caramel drizzle. You like apples, right?”

He’s touched that she noticed, let alone that she remembers in her drunken haze. He smiles.

“Yes.”

The crepe is good. The dough is lightly sweet, filling gooey and warm, and the cinnamon is of surprisingly good quality. He takes one delicate bite, and then another one. Hawke pouts, and he offers her the crepe. Instead of taking it from his hand, she takes a bite directly and looks altogether too pleased with the colour that fills his cheeks.

“So good,” she says, and leans her shoulder against Fenris’ own. The smile fades from her face as she chews. It is replaced by something nostalgic and melancholy, a sigh and raised eyebrows, and she does not meet his eye.

“Y’know,” she starts, and Fenris is alarmed at the wetness in her eyes, “Mother really liked this place. It might be open late, but we used to go a lot after the weekend market.”

There is nothing to say, so he doesn’t say anything. His hand, though, comes to rest on her lower back as if of its own accord; he is relieved when she seems to relax into the gesture.

“I know..” Hawke trails off, letting out a slow breath. She sounds more lucid than she has all evening, though she still stumbles over her words. “I know what this looks like. To you, to everyone. I can... Varric keeps giving me these looks. I just... I don’t know how to stop.”

The crepe is forgotten in his hand, though he does vaguely notice the caramel sauce dripping on him. 

“Stop what, Hawke?” he asks, softly.

Another laboured sigh, and now she leans the side of her head against his, too. She is so close that he can feel her breath, curiously smelling like mulled wine thanks to the cinnamon of the crepe.

“This. I just thought... if I can’t keep my mother safe... I couldn’t keep Carver safe, Da... there was nothing I could do. And then—” She hiccups. “Then, this thing with the Arishok, and you said I could duel him, and...”

She looks up at him, tears wetting those dusty eyelashes, grey eyes filled with the kind of sorrow Fenris knew one could drown in.

“I felt like I didn’t deserve to be safe either.”

When he realizes what she is saying, he is first filled with regret, then heartbreak on her behalf, and finally, horror at his own actions. How did he not see her grief, her pain? Her two daggers against a two-handed sword and a greataxe? How could he have suggsted the duel in the first place? 

“No,” she gasps, her eyes filling with horror in turn, and gently places a hand on Fenris’ knee. “It’s not your fault. I hid it really well, I didn’t want anyone to know, I... I’m just like this. I don’t know why, but I am. I swear.”

This does not make him feel any better.

When he finally speaks, he is surprised that his voice is rough.

“Hawke,” he starts, his words a little strangled, “you do deserve to be safe. And if you can’t believe that for now, I’ll believe it for you.”

It seems that Hawke now doesn’t know what to say, either, and they stare at each other for awhile, before she whispers a soft, “Thanks.”

And, because she is still drunk and it is still the middle of the night, she takes her hand off his knee and declares, “Now, give me that crepe.”

[renaerys]

So I beat RE:8

And overall I SUPER enjoyed this game. I loved how it was an homage to the series to date. Castle Dimitrescu made me feel like I was back in the OG Resident Evil stealth-crawling my way through dungeons and puzzles and hoping not to get caught by the enemies. Lady Dimitrescu stalking you as you scramble to gather pieces of a puzzle to escape harkened back to the Tyrant in RE:2 chasing you around RPD HQ. Her daughters’ blow fly entrances were sincerely spine-tingling, and I was on the edge of my seat with each new door opened wondering if they’d found me yet. This level was truly a standout of the game.

The Beneviento House may actually have been my favorite, seeing as it was such a departure from the rest of the game without the use of weapons and having to rely on running and hiding to survive. I was at my most terrified and unsettled in that level dissecting doll!Mia and running from the baby creature in a way I didn’t feel throughout the rest of the game. It was so creepy and so tense, and the juxtaposition with the rest of the game really made it shine imo. 

The Reservoir was probably my least favorite part. It felt too much like the action-y RE:6 against the boss, lots of cheap one-hit kill events that relied on timing, etc. It was the part where I died the most, whereas throughout the rest of the game I died maybe twice or three times. 

Heisenberg’s factory was pretty scary and adrenaline-inducing fighting those awful chainsaw guys. Hot take: RE:5 was a great game and a lot of this level reminded me of the better parts of that game wrt the enemies and mowing them down. The layout was super cool, the fan guy was hilariously scary stalking you, and Heisenberg was as grandiose (and verbose) as Wesker once was back in the old days. I loved the molding puzzles, how the enemies would tear down walls to open new areas to explore, and the backtracking to explore it all once you had certain items in your possession. 

Lastly, the Duke was an awesome character. Thanks for that fun call-back to RE:4′s shopkeeper, and most importantly for being an actual character whose presence was plot-relevant and even integral at times. He was charming and a thoughtful addition to the experience. All the voice acting was incredible, but I think the Duke and Lady Dimitrescu and Mia were standouts. 

What I didn’t like... This game has a woman problem like whoa. When all your women exist either as damseled plot devices with no agency whatsoever, vehicles for manpain/revenge, and their main “nuance” is related to motherhood or seeking a mother-daughter relationship (because, you know, women be mothering), then you have a problem. A second hot take: Mia should have been the protagonist. She had training way before Ethan ever did, was in the know more than him, and wasn’t dead the whole time (sidebar: what the literal fuck is this plot contrivance). This game has shown us two kinds of women: either they are good mothers/daughters who eschew all else in favor of that relationship and stay in their lane (Mia and Rose, an agency-less baby and McGuffin), or they are corruptions of that role (i.e., Miranda selfishly killing everyone to get Eve back or Donna selfishly killing everyone to get a new mother a-la RE:7′s Eveline). Even the Dimitrescu ladies were almost entirely defined by their mother/daughter status, in Lady Dimitrescu’s case both. Is there truly no other motivation or nuance available to women in this universe??? 🙃🙃🙃

Mentioned before but worth repeating: Ethan was dead the whole time?! What a shitty contrivance. I mean, fine, but I didn’t like it at all. Another nit-picky thing that broke my suspension of disbelief: Alcina cuts his hand off and the magic herb chemicals that act as health in the game can reattach it... But they can’t regrow his fucking fingers??? What is consistency. 🙃

Heisenberg’s boss fight was dumb. There was no terror, very low stakes, and it felt like the worst of RE:6 action. It even had a gimmicky cinematic final shot that reminded me of those awful quick-time events. He was laughably easy to kill and held none of the dread of, say, Lady Dimitrescu’s daughers or the entirety of the Beneviento House. I don’t knock it as much because the rest of the Factory level was fabulous. The boss fight with the Fan Man was superb, scary, and tough, as well as “good” gimmicky. Unfortunately, Heisenberg’s final boss fight was the beginning of the end. 

Chris finally tells us the truth through some truly excruciating exposition scenes, and like the NPCs who question his choices, I too was questioning him. Because his logic was super dumb. Why not tell Ethan to begin with? More on this below. 

Mother Miranda was incredibly underwhelming as a boss. Chris’s part in the story was more over the top action, which is cool and fun if you like that (not really my thing, personally, but I can see why it could work for others). But Mother Miranda herself was a disappointment. I think the main reason was because we had almost no relationship with her. She was just a name who maybe is responsible for our McGuffin daughter being taken, but it never felt personal. Yeah, she can shape shift and we met her as the hag, but since we didn’t know that, the relationship aspect was never there/built upon. She felt like a random final boss with little skin in the game compared to, say, Heisenberg, who we actually did get to know more as we went along and maybe felt more complicated feelings toward in killing him. 

This game could have been better if a few changes had been made. 

1. Mia should have been the protagonist/deuteragonist. If we are truly supposed to be convinced by Chris’ stupid logic that Ethan cannot handle the truth, then why not make Mia the protagonist or even a secondary protagonist? Ethan and Mia could have both been working toward their goals with different information, similar to the situation in RE:7 toward the end of that game. Chris wouldn’t know Mia is alive, but she could be working against Mother Miranda directly while being experimented on/held captive. Ethan could do the main story that we got, while Mia sees a different side of the world digging deeper into Mother Miranda’s backstory and motivations, which would serve to flesh out her character (beyond the lazy corrupted motherhood narrative), touch on the relationship to Spencer and Umbrella Corp, etc. Ethan facing Miranda at the end, thus, would have felt super personal and significant having that emotional development through Mia. And Mia herself could be fleshed out more as a character beyond her role as wife and mother. 

2. Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra deserved more, and Castle Dimitrescu should have been a longer arc. The daughters were killed pretty fast. I couldn’t name a single differentiating characteristic between them, which is a problem. And I wanted to know more! We got a little info about the experiments they endured. I wanted to feel like killing at least one of them was very personal and meant something (if we only got one of them really fleshed out, I mean. That would still be one more than we got.). This section could have been longer and benefited from it. Exploring that castle was so fun and I wanted more time there. Also, I’m gonna say it: the Reservoir could have been cut entirely and that time given to Castle Dimitrescu for three sub-bosses before Mother Miranda. Problem solved.

3. Chis could have had a more story-related role. Why not more cutscenes with Chris investigating/chasing Miranda to give us a buildup of breadcrumbs and foreshadowing to the final reveal in the end? Rather than an exposition dump?? This would be related to my point #1 in making Miranda feel more connected to the story as the big bad. We wouldn’t even have to play as Chris if we just got some cutscenes showing his team’s progress hunting Miranda, learning more about her, etc. Imagine if we got secondary protagonist Mia’s story with Chris in there alongside her, unknowing that she’s alive and yet affecting her progress or vice versa as they both hunt Miranda? So much potential there. Where is the fanfiction???

4. Sheva??? I know it’s just me but I mean... The BSAA coming in to help/fuck everything up could have been a great opportunity for a cameo from Sheva to reunite very briefly with Chris (and set up the next one??? When though.). Yeah, I’m RE:5 trash, okay. But she was a great character and I wish we could see her at ALL in any other games even as a cameo.

My final takeaway here is that I enjoyed this game immensely as a total experience. I’m already doing a New Game Plus on the Village of Shadows difficulty, so pray for me. I love the exploration and puzzling aspect, the combat is intense but not overwhelmingly action-y like RE:6 was, and I love the atmosphere of this game. I recommend it to anyone who likes survival horror. It’s not without its faults, and I really wish the RE team would hire some women for their writers’ room, but I’m still very happy with the end result overall. 

[transformers-autobotsrollout]

Cybertron. A planet that has been embroiled in war seemingly since its creation. This is the stage on which our story is set. 

We open on a gladiator named “Powered Convoy” getting whaled on Strong-Bot. While he manages to get the upper hand and wins the match, as he leaves, we can tell that he doesn’t enjoy what he does for a living. He drives back to the docks where he lives, which are in pretty bad shape, but his face lights up when he sees Ratchet and she tells him about her new job.

The next day, Ratchet asks Optronix what paint job she should have on her first day working at Iacon City’s science guild (Oppy's got his arm covering his eyes, he is polite) and Magnum comes in asking Optronix how his last match went. Typical wholesome, slice of life robots. When Ratchet drives up to the citadel, Optronix takes a sharp left to talk to his... correspondent. It's not Megatron, but Sentinel Prime who was a like-minded 'Bot who believed in his words.

Sentinel explains that while he can’t directly bring petitions to Alpha Trion, he has gained an audience with Megatron, who’s most certainly the closest and most powerful they’ve got to someone who approves of off-planet exploration. While Optronix is nothing but firm in his beliefs, he’s unable to articulate what he wants in front of a crowd (in his words: “I’m bad with speeches”), so he asks Sentinel to speak for him. 

Sentinel agrees, and then we hard cut to Megatron in a testing facility, currently watching Doubledealer and Shatter show off the destructive capabilities of a massive fusion cannon. A little on the nose, but I think it’s good.

Ratchet’s first day doesn't go as well as she’d hoped. She gets mocked for being lower-class by the elite guard, ignored and pushed around by the more experienced medics and scientists, and by lunch she’s wishing she never left home. And then she meets Ariel Pax, a cadet in the Elite Guard. Ariel treats her with kindness that she’s endlessly grateful to finally get from these city-bots, and she spends the rest of the day with her.

The summit is treated more like a daytrip for Megatron. Megatron only talks to Sentinel, period, and he spends most of the time talking about his own opinions wherever Sentinel tries to discuss the content of Optronix's words. Optronix still doesn't talk much due to his fear of speaking in public, but he does his best to keep up. 

Anyways, they have lunch at a typical fancy place with 56 forks and Megatron is still only talking to Sentinel. Sentinel's trying to recall Op's words as best as he can, but Optronix has had enough and finally speaks his mind, shocking them both.

Megatron and Sentinel both leave for the train, but Optronix realizes that Megatron... "forgot" to tip, so he sticks behind. On the train, Sentinel admits that it was Optronix who had a solid plan on societal reform, but Megatron has his own opinions on Optimus... namely that he's "too naive" to be a leader and that it'll take a miracle to convince him otherwise.

The train suddenly lurches forward without Optronix on it. Poor guy has to cling to the caboose just in the nick of time as Sentinel and Megatron inside try to figure out what's going on. A masked individual suddenly jumps the two, and while they outclass him physically, he's able to use magnetic fields and well-placed knockout gas to take them out. 

Optronix pries his way into the train and finds it full of explosives that he has no idea how to defuse... so he calls out for Sentinel and Megatron, and gets no response. They're a little tied up at the moment (HA).

Megatron isn't amused and dryly asks how much the intruder plans on ransoming them for. The response he gets is that they're not getting ransomed at all; they're going to be blown to smithereens from the dozens of EMP bombs he's planted all over the train. 

Significantly more freaked out, Sentinel tries to reason with him. But the intruder says that there's nothing that Sentinel or Megatron or any of those hoity-toity bluebloods can do to stop this, and that they've had it coming for a while. Megatron laughs and tears into the bot.

“My fault? You think this is my fault? Oh, that is rich!

You’re one of those bots, aren’t you? Let me explain something. I’ve worked my way to the top with everything going against me, with everyone I’d known being sent offline or segfaulting their RAMS to the point of inoperability, and I’m still standing. I struggled for my position in life, and you have the audacity to accuse me of being undeserving? 

Think about it. Real hard. What have you done to deserve your lot in life? That’s what I thought. You’ve done nothing. Nothing at all! You’ve lazed away in your rusting husk of a chassis and decided to punch up for the fun of it. That's why you blame me, you blame everyone that’s actively tried to be an operating member of society out of your own jealousy and guilt. You sat as you were, a worthless lay-about, and you take it out on people you deem your 'oppressors'.

It isn’t my fault that you’ve gone nowhere, it’s the fault of an ill-mannered, ill-tempered, functionless, underdeveloped cog with nothing better to do than to beg for scrap metal instead of-!”

The stranger tapes his mouth shut and is like “lol figures” while Sentinel tries to be all “you’re never gonna get away with this, Optronix is gonna getcha” and the guy noticeably freezes up. Optronix is about halfway to where they are when he’s ambushed. 

Thankfully, he manages to knock the guy out of the emergency door, and they have your typical battle atop a train. Optronix notices something familiar about the magnetic attacks he uses and breaks the mask he'd been wearing. It’s his old friend Windcharger, who’s quite unhappy about Optronix "becoming Megatron’s new bodyguard."

Optronix explains that it’s a misunderstanding, and Windcharger goes on about how people like Megatron are the reasons that Optronix was forced into fighting in the first place; Optronix’s spark is in the right place but he aims too high. Understanding Windcharger’s frustrations, he at least tries to talk him down from destroying the train as it’ll not only kill him, but it’ll kill all the innocent bots waiting at the station. Just as Windcharger seems like he’s about to relent… Megatron blasts him in the chest.

Sentinel’s sentries aided in their escape and defused all the bombs. Optronix soberly brings Windcharger’s shell back inside as Megatron thanks him for the rescue. As they pull into the station, Megatron spins his tale about Optronix’s genius and his defeat of a dangerous terrorist, all the while he’s really in the back, stabilizing Windcharger. 

He asks why Optronix didn’t leave him to die, to which Optronix tells him that it’s his second chance to make a change that involves less mayhem. He can tell that Windcharger is passionate about his cause and he hopes he’ll make the right choice. Windcharger flees through a trap door and Optronix steps outside to face the reporters.

Megatron’s busy talking about how his life was saved by Optronix and Sentinel Prime and how whomever was responsible for this is in custody (HA). Except this bit's on a screen that Magnum is watching, and he asks Optronix how much of it's true. Sentinel answers for Optronix that Megatron greatly exaggerated a lot of it, but the basic gist is true.

Optronix says that he feels uncomfortable at the amount of "deception" that's being used to fill in the gaps, even with Sentinel reassuring him that " it doesn't matter if he agrees with us or not, just as long as our message has a platform".

Evidently Optimus isn't too jazzed about that. He mumbles something under his breath about how blunt honesty is more effective than convincing lies. Magnum, Optronix, and Sentinel get off the shuttle and arrive at the Dancitron. Sentinel insists that "Primes don't party" but he's dragged in by a delighted Ratchet, who's celebrating her first week as a proper doctor. 

At the Dancitron, Ariel Pax and Ratchet dance together while Optronix talks more about his beliefs with Magnum and wonders if he's aiming too high. Yes, he wants Cybetronian culture to branch out and share with the universe, but Sentinel's words have made him worry if he should be trying to fix their society first and focus on other planets later. Optronix tells Magnum "I never wanted this vision of mine to be a transaction".

The next day, Optronix meets Jetfire and his envoy of Protectobot Elite guardsmen for the first time. He was Ariel Pax's commanding officer in the Elite Guard and a brash, overconfident jerk that didn't really mesh too well with 'civilians' and was very blunt and vocal about his opinions. Optronix could NOT stand him at first and their first meeting ended with Optronix calling him a "brute".

Megatron talks to Flipsides and Shockwave about what really happened in his massive garden. He admits that while he is impressed with Optronix, he'd "prefer to keep my business partners at arms' length" and that gives him an idea. 

Megatron calls Sentinel and requests a meeting with him. When he arrives, he offers him a job at Tarn Industries and tells him he'll upgrade all his sentries free of charge. Sentinel refuses because he already has his job as a Station Master and he doesn't want his sentries tampered with. Megatron's pissed but concedes.

Ratchet learns to fight from Ariel and confides in her that she’s always hated violence from first hand seeing Optronix’s injuries from the gladiator matches and patching up her fellow dock workers. 

Magnum is in Metroplex, trying to get their leader Gravitas to back Optronix's words. He never really trusted Megatron or his company and he just wants the best for his best friend. But Gravitas won't listen; he's clearly preoccupied with something else. Whatever Magnum tries to say, he's shut down or blocked off with xenophobic statements that he knows'll only drag them offtopic if he tries to contest them. 

Gravitas at least has the decency to tell Magnum that he clearly has a good head on his shoulders... which is why he's been chosen to be the next leader of Metroplex. Turns out Gravitas has a week to live because of the noncommunicable rust plague inside his body, yaaaaaaaaay. 

Magnum takes this poorly and panics to Optronix that he doesn't think he'll be ready for all the power that comes with this position. Optronix, equally stressed, proceeds to become even more stressed.

Optronix and Sentinel finally get Alpha Trion and the rest of the Cybertronic Alliance to hear them out. Sentinel hasn't told Optronix anything about Megatron offering him a job nor what he heard when he was tied to him (remember Chapter 1 where Megatron was a jackass to Windcharger?)  and Optronix is incredibly nervous about speaking in front of a crowd. Megatron has made it clear through pretty much everything he's done that he's got something else planned for Optronix's idea, but they've no idea how he's going to spin it.

Megatron opens with the basic gist of Optronix's ideals; their culture is stagnating and their world needs a cultural reset. All's good so far until Megatron unveils his idea: to colonize and conquer other planets. Using their resources and spreading the name of Cybertron far and wide, establishing trade centers for partners, becoming stronger and stronger through political allies and bringing Cybertron into a new Golden Age. 

Optronix's worst fears have come to light. Megatron's made it all about himself and is treating the entire thing as a business proposition. Worse yet, the members of the council and even some bots in the crowd are agreeing with him. 

So he puts his foot down and tells Megatron that this wasn't what he'd intended, that he's spinning this concept wildly into something that benefits only him and not the whole of society.

Megatron responds thusly. "You came to me and asked if I could help you speak. I strongly suggest you recall why you couldn't do it yourself."

Optronix is silent.

Megatron asks "Is there anything else you'd like to say?"

"Yes."

With that, Megatron takes a right hook to the face and goes sailing into the wall. Now that he's been sufficiently silenced, Optronix tells the council his ideas. 

Cybertron should branch out with peace and support, not with ideas of conquering and monetary gain from these people. They can share their cultures and learn new things from alien lifeforms without forcing their ways of life onto them. How every sapient being in the universe deserves freedom and the right to education.

"Don't you see? There's no need for senseless violence-" 

He's cut off when Megatron tackles him to the ground. 

As the two of them begin to fight, the entire house devolves into chaos, with verbal and physical blows flying left and right. Everything has gone to hell, and it's not made any better when Alpha Trion calls order in the court with his "equalizing staff". Alpha Trion declares the two mentally unfit on the spot and orders them both to have "system purges" in order to “calm their circuitry.” 

Megatron is royally pissed at having his name dragged through the mud, and as the two are taken away by Elite Guardsmen, loudly blames Optronix for the whole thing. Jetfire outright refuses to perform a system purge on them despite what Alpha Trion says, taking Optronix by surprise. While the alternative treatment (a nanite bath) isn't exactly enjoyable itself, it's far less invasive than the former.

A month passes. Optronix feels horrid. All his intentions blew up in his face and this, if any, is a good time for Sentinel to tell Optronix the truth. Optronix isn't shocked at all, but he asks why Sentinel didn't tell him sooner. Sentinel tells him that he didn't want to discourage him because Megatron was the closest thing they had to a foot in the door. This leads to an argument where Optronix asks Sentinel if it was worth siding with a xenophobe just for the sake of popularity. 

After quite a bit of nasty insults are lobbed back and forth, Sentinel leaves and Optronix folds in on himself.

Megatron visits one of his own subsidiary factories in Velocitron. He's eerily serene as he speaks with the head engineer of the building, Dirt Boss. Once Dirt Boss tells him everything he needs to know and asks him why he's in such a good mood, Megatron smiles and tells him he's got a new lease on life. 

He proceeds to shoot Dirt Boss point blank and rigs the building to explode, knowing fully well that the radius will decimate the nearby train station and send one hell of a message. As Ratchet and Magnum lead Optronix outside to try and cheer him up, they see a massive billowing black smoke cloud in the distance…

Optronix and Magnum aid in the horrible aftermath of the meltdown on Velocitron. Megatron is being shady and keeps making references to an “ ideological terrorist attack” with roughly zero proof. Magnus and Override have a sweet little moment of romantic tension as they knock into each other. Optronix remains cautious about the attack as Ratchet snarks about how Megatron is still bitter about having his brain waves scrambled… which never actually happened since you know, Jetfire’s gayness saved Optimus and also Megatron by proxy.

Optronix and Ratchet enter Iacon’s Hall of records and read up on Cybertronian history to try and figure out how to get their own movement off the ground. Optronix discovers information about some of the primes and realizes that a lot of them share the same morals and views that he does. He's beside himself as he keeps scampering back to grab more and more datapads about all the primes as Ratchet watches. Optronix is overwhelmed with joy that he's not alone... and then he sees a symbol emblazoned across one of their chests.

An ancient symbol, one that means "quick-thinker”. Autobot. And this gives Optronix an idea. Optronix throws a match for the first time in his career, and everyone can tell. He uses the assembled crowd to better discuss his beliefs and explain the future he wants for Cybertron. And surprisingly enough... he gets someone that listens to him. Namely, his OPPONENT, Impactor. This little spark of hope is enough to convince him that he's still got a fighting chance.

A few days later, Magnum is getting ready for the official announcement that he’ll become the next leader of Metroplex, following Gravitas’ death. He’s distracted from these proceedings when an episode of Andromeda Explains It All airs with Megatron as its special guest, a mere half-hour before he’s scheduled to appear. Magnum immediately tells the guards to cancel the announcement out of fear for the pro-Autobot civilians in the crowd.

Optronix is having his own problems with being an Autobot as he has to help an Autobot supporter being hounded by two punks calling themselves Decepticons, one of which accuses Optronix of being “pro-invasion”. They quickly shut up and book it when Jetfire and Sentinel appear. Still burned by Sentinel’s betrayal, Optronix is cold towards the both of them, but Sentinel begs Optimus to hear them out. Namely, Jetfire thinks that Megatron intentionally sabotaged his own factory to incite violence towards them and their supporters. So Optronix and Sentinel put aside their annoyances towards each other and focus on the true villain, Megatron.

The Decepticons proceed to cause more chaos across multiple cities as the Autobots clash with them. Ariel and Ratchet argue about the rising tensions, with Ariel refusing to spur the wrath and endanger more people by outwardly supporting the Autobots as an Elite Guard member, and Ratchet contesting that Ariel knows that standing up for what she believes in is more important.

Jetfire and Sentinel (who is entirely unwilling) burst into Megatron’s private airship with all their evidence. Jetfire threatens to arrest Megatron right there on the spot. The two Autobots are promptly dragged out of the ship by reactionary Decepticons. The Decepticons take Sentinel hostage and attempt to execute him where he stands, but The Elite Guard is there to stop them.

Iacon is set ablaze by the Decepticons and the heroes rush to the citadel. Alpha Trion's all like "oh okay huh looks like the incredibly invasive mental reprogramming backfired, who'da thunk". We and Optronix of course know that they never were reprogrammed because Jetfire saved them, but being that Jetfire is unconscious, he can't exactly explain that to him.

Alpha Trion then begs Optronix to protect the Matrix, thinking Megatron's going to steal it and use it's power against him out of vengeance. Optronix agrees, on the condition that Alpha Trion doesn't hold himself up in the citadel and helps his friends get innocents inside.

So Megatron shows up a little later on, Alpha Trion begs for mercy and apologizes for what he did to them both, but guess what! Megs doesn't care! He's just here to kill Alpha Trion and leave because he can blame it on the riots exploding across the city. He doesn't give two damns about the Matrix.

"I'm not going to kill you. Gravity should do most of the work."

But Optronix shows up to save the day, the Matrix around his neck on a chain. Megatron weighs his options on who he wants to kill more and Optronix quite literally has a target painted on his chest, so he takes the bait and chases him away from the citadel, in turn protecting everyone that was packed within.

The Elite Guard and Ratchet successfully get a barrier around the citadel, only for Inferno to suddenly reveal his true colors as a Decepticon double-agent. He stabs Ariel’s optic out and tries to off her while she’s wounded. Ratchet snaps. She not only tackles him to the ground, but she successfully tears his arm out of its socket and beats him with it. Windblade is barely able to get her off him, but the damage is done in more ways than one.

Once they're well and far away from the center of town, Optronix tries to open the Matrix and blast Megatron into next Tuesday. This fails and Megatron mocks him before blasting him (and the ground beneath his feet), and Optronix falls through an entire building, seemingly offlining him. Jetfire's second wind comes in and he starts whaling on Megatron as Optronix lies in the basement of the building quietly pleading for the Matrix to open.

His grip falters, he slumps over, and in true LIGHT OUR DARKEST HOUR fashion, the Matrix transes Optronix's gender and boosts his lightning powers, giving him the strength to soundly body Megatron. Megatron falls in front of the Decepticons and has to be carried away by Strikha, who orders a full retreat.

Optronix returns to the citadel with both Jetfire and the Matrix in his possession. Alpha Trion is shocked, but his friends are nothing but overjoyed. It's Jetfire who comes up with the name Optimus by way of calling his transformation "an optimal solution".

Ariel awakens missing her optic and berates Sentinel for not knowing what he was doing, only to change her tune when she hears Ratchet's the one that saved her life. Ratchet weakly smiles as Ariel thanks her.

Alpha Trion is all set to set up a grand ceremony, but Optimus tells him to read the room and says there will be no celebrations until the city is rebuilt. He wonders to himself if he's deserving of this power and if he's just as culpable of starting this mess as Megatron is. He looks around and sees the company he's kept... and reassures himself that there's still goodness in the world, and the best they can do right now is pick up the pieces.

[very-very-dizzy]

20

Seaweed-20

Sorry if this one took a long while! The idea started out small, but actually turned into a short nearly 2k fic. For this prompt, I had some good ideas on what to do but they were mostly spoilers so went with this! For who takes narrative? A good question.

(Warning for dark themes, injury, death)

--------

Heavy footsteps slammed against metallic floors. Each in rhythm as they marched forward. Those in sync each adorned two strands of seaweed on their goggles. A symbol that told of their superiority over all else.

There would be no peace as their song was one of execution.

An octoling young enough where she neared her humanoid form but still hadn't developed full tentacles, ran for her life. Avoiding other octarians as they all ran from the sound of marching. In her arms, she carried a younger octoling who clung tightly to her shirt..

Years before the octoling had found them thrown out into her dome just like other defects. Taking them in as a sibling and showing them to her small family. It was common in the outer domes for octarians to form groups as survival alone was hopeless. Although, they both would have to worry later about their family as finding a place to hide them was currently more important.

Finding a small gap against a building’s wall, the octoling stopped and set their sibling inside. Grabbing a frame from a nearby pile of panels and using it to cover the gap. It was an area she would hide them each time elites came through their dome. While not her size, it was enough to keep her little sibling hidden.

“[Stay in there and remember to not move.]” She whispered.

Once seeing that the panel was secured, the octoling grabbed a few pieces of scrap metal. She crept away from the hiding spot, but stopped as multiple voices grew in volume. Looking quickly for somewhere to hide, she found a spot behind a box as footsteps came closer.

A shout caused all of the footsteps to pause. The octoling covered her mouth as someone walked over to where she hid. Giving a small thud as they sat down on the box she hid behind. Throwing aside their octoshot to where she hid.

“[Hey Lake! How’s that other Ida doing? Heard they’re already working on the Great Octoweapons in Slimeskin Garrison.]”

Eyes wide, the octoling knew who they were speaking to. A cruel monster that led many platoons through her dome. She started to shiver in fear as their voice, a voice she’d grown to dread, spoke up with its gruff tone.

Colonel Lake Ida.

“[Don’t know how much she’s doing personally. Labs keep a close eye on keeping information hidden, but they never get anything past me.]” Lake paused before continuing again, “[Anyway, heard she already figured out how to change her forms. Kid’s already 14 and doing things I never could have at her age.]”

“[Really?]” Another soldier asked.

“[Of course. While those pebbles think she’s got to be isolated, I’m planning on giving her a visit soon. Heard she’s been given some training but still hesitates with executing opponents.]” She let out a laugh, “[Although, what’s amazing is that she is building weapons that’ll splat those disgusting squids, achieving perfect scores, and being top notch in physical activities. Makes me jealous of her levels of intelligence, but at least I’m still  better than you low-grades.]”

The group of soldiers broke into laughter. Although a few were quiet growls could be heard at their response. Once they stopped, a nervous voice spoke up amongst them. With how quiet they were, it was easy to guess they were someone new.

“[Um… Colonel Ida? Why are we out out here in the outer domes?]” 

“[To perform our duty of preserving the Octarian Empire. Out here, there’s mutant and throw-outs that our government wastes donating supplies and energy to. That’s why it is up to us to lower their numbers.]” Lake responded.

A small noise of discomfort was made. “[Do the higher-ups know?]”

“[Of course, but they don’t want to make it public. DJ Octavio knows the public would make a large fuss over providing for these weaklings. So, that’s why our task is a simple task that must be done for the greater good.]”

“[So we are to splat all in sight?]” There was a hint of uncertainty in the nervous elite’s voice.

“[Affirmative, but also to capture and release. A little game of inspiring fear into any that try to fight back. It’s also more fun to play around by having them try to run again.]” A panicked blurb sounded as a box away from them was smashed. Following after were shots of ink fired from an octoshot. “[They hold no power over us so don’t worry about them trying to report you, because they’ve seen your face. Do not forget we are superior over them, and I am above you all.]”

“[That’s correct! Now let’s head out!]” The more cheerful voice spoke out. It wasn’t hard to figure out they were Colonel Ida’s right-hand.

As the rest of the soldiers left, the octoling crept out from her hiding spot. Deciding to take off towards a small shelter. Sweat pouring off her face as continued to run. Breaths staggering with each step taken as her body screamed to keep going.

Until she turned one corner and slammed against a wall. Having forgotten before that there had been reconstruction to rebuild a home that crumbled after time. Too focused on her own self, she hadn’t heard footsteps from behind.

“[Seems you made a wrong turn, kid.]”

Freezing up in fear, the octoling refused to turn around. Her mind screamed to run knowing full well that she had been caught. It was now life or death, and she needed to flee or fight.

“[It’s you again!]” Lake beamed, a grin donning her face. “[How much of a delight this is being I get a second chance at killing you.]”

The young octoling attempted to make an escape, but was grabbed as Lake picked her up with ease. She repeatedly slammed the small octoling against a wall, until deciding enough was done. Knowing they wouldn’t be unconscious as she had held back her strength.

“[Don’t think I forgot about last time. How a pathetic weakling like you managed to scratch my face. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure this time you won’t get a chance to run again.]”

As the octoling struggled to push herself up, she didn’t expect Lake to grab her again. This time, throwing her against a window, which shattered upon impact. Shards of glass digging into her side as she landed upon a dirt floor.

Vision fading in and out, her body felt as if it had been set ablaze from inside. Sharp prinpicks kept stabbing at her arms. Her own tentacles ached with pain from the harsh landing. Picking at her eyes’ edge were droplets of tears ready to fall. Ready for her to give in and break down from the pain.

The young octoling closed her eyes, awaiting for her misery to already end at the elite’s hand. A sound made her open her eyes, and she found herself staring directly into a pair of green eyes with pink peanut shape irises. A clawed hand suddenly grabbed her by the neck, and lifted her upward.

“[Looks like I found you-]”

Lake was cut off as a jagged scrap of metal was pushed into her throat by the octoling. Dropping the octoling, she continued to grasp at the gaping laceration. Making an attempt to stop as more of a turquoise liquid pushed out as her wound opened further once she pulled the metal shard out.

“[BRAT! I’LL-]” Lake broke into heavy coughing.

While unknown to the both of them, multiple octarians burst from a closet inside the building. Each going behind it and using their weight to push it down. Giving enough force that it eventually did fell upon the bleeding elite, but not the young octoling.

After the large noise from impact, shouts from outside came and made everyone inside panic. An octotrooper made its way over to the young octoling and pushed against her side. Their eyes were filled with fear knowing that they all wouldn’t have time. “[Hurry! Go!]”

Opening her mouth, the young octoling prepared to respond but felt something round press against her leg.

Ot, an octoball, and part of her family. While he hadn’t been in their family for long, she saw him as an older brother. He would aid her in supply runs whenever their stock would get low. Although now she feared they wouldn’t be after what had occurred.

“[Uu’oa, sister. We will distract them, and take fault.]” Ot spoke, “[What’ve you done has saved us from one monster.]”

“[B-But -]” She attempted to say, but was shoved by another octarian. More kept pushing against her as others ran to form a blockade against the other door. Shouts from outside growing louder.

“[Go! Hide! Then find G87-8!]” Ot shouted, pushing her through a back door.

With tears, the octoling nodded and limped away. Holding back sobs as she heard weapons being fired. It wouldn’t take long until she reached a small piece of panel.  Deciding it would be enough for her to hide in. Crawling under it, she finally let herself cry.

Barely able to process from what had occurred in just moments before.

As hours passed by, the young octoling woke up at the sound of voices. Two different ones from what she had heard before when Colonel Ida was giving her orders.

“[So what do we do about, Colonel Ida?]” One of the asked, seemingly tired.

“[We say she died because of dome debris. It’s what we use to excuse any deaths out here.]” They let out a small grunt. “[Anyway, our only priority is to get the injured out. We’ll tell Ida’s First Lieutenant about all of it after she’s in the med bay.]”

Slowly peeking out, the octoling noticed both had already left. Through more inspection, she confirmed it was safe to head back towards her little sibling. Going back to where she had left them.

Pulling away the panel, she nearly cried from relief. Seeing they were unharmed, she took them back out, and pulled her younger sibling into a tight hug. She would wait to tell them what had happened to Ot, not until they both were with their family. 

“[Are you okay?]” She asked them. Giving a little smile as they responded with a small nod.

Stepping away from their hiding spot, she walked into a crowd of fellow octarians. Seeing others with emptiness in their or tears as they sobbed for those that had been lost to the execution. A numbness filled their hearts as they knew it wouldn’t be the last. 

Seaweed.

It was that cursed object that became a symbol of death for them.

Swearing on her life, the octoling swore  to never adone the seaweed headpiece and become the monsters that marched through their dome.

Instead, she’ll become something they fear.

…

MEMORY REACQUISITION COMPLETE.

REPLAY?

TERMINATE?

OVERWRITE?

TRANSFER?

>[Terminate.]

MEMORY TERMIN-

ERROR.

>[Terminate.]

ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR. CORRUPTION FOUND. ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.

>[Retrieve Subject Status.]

SUBJECT 8,380: SANITIZED.

>[Retrieve Subject Orders]

ON STANDBY. 

>[Retrieve Subject Location.]

.

..

...MISSING.

[askullinajar]

Fifty Shades Dicked

The time has come for the third instalment of Fifty Shades of Ectoplasm

This is entirely the fault of the heathens over on the discord, namely @ironsilversaltandtea for posting the photo that led to it all, @achillesangst for making some interesting art of it, and @stormwalkers and @wolfjawswriter for just general shenanigans and egging on.

Warning: Any accuracies, historically, scientifically, or to canon, are completely accidental. This is pure crack. No actual hanky-panky - as I am but a totally innocent asexual - but a whole lot of inappropriate jokes. You have been warned.

Fic info: Post teg. Rating: Mature, clearly. Pairings: Implied locklyle. Word count: 1626

Summary: The gang stumble across a certain something previously owned by Mr and Mrs Lockwood. Shenanigans ensue.

It was a mild spring morning the day we managed to scar Lockwood for life.

The company was going through a lull in cases - something about warmer weather and extended daylight made ghosts not want to show themselves - and we were using that time to do a spot of spring cleaning. The fact that Holly had threatened to quit if she found another of George’s rotting ‘experiments’ stuffed in a random cupboard had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Holly was out with her flatmate on what she insisted was ‘definitely not a date, stop being nosy’ and had appointed Quill to keep an eye on us. His only purpose seemed to be nabbing whatever alcohol we found buried in cupboards from the days when Lockwood’s parents were still around and lounging in a chair complaining about this and that. I wasn’t really paying attention, to be honest; I was too busy trying to get Skully to stop dripping ectoplasm all over the newly-cleaned surfaces as he hovered above us making increasingly rude comments. 

“You could help you know!” I snapped at him, interrupting Quill’s ranting about the extortionate prices of laundry detergent.

“Moi?” said Skully, swooning dramatically in midair. “I am but a simple street urchin, I know nothing about this so-called ‘cleaning’ thing.” He waved a hand and sent half the kitchen appliances skidding across the counter and crashing to the floor. “Whoopsie!” he said, though his sadistic grin was far from apologetic. 

I picked up the salt shaker and threw it at him. It passed right through, of course, and collided with the wall, but a few grains of salt came loose and hissed as they came into contact with his ectoplasm. 

“Ow!”

I ignored his complaints and went to put the appliances back with Lockwood and George’s help. When the boys hefted up the microwave, I noticed the floorboard beneath it had come loose. I knelt by it and dug my fingers in to prise it up.

“There’s a box under here,” I informed them, brushing dust away from the wilted cardboard.

George kneeled next to me and adjusted his glasses to peer at it. “Interesting. Reckon it contains anything of paranormal significance?”

“Or anything valuable?” said Quill, kneeling on my other side.

“It’s probably just stuff my parents hid when authorities came to call,” shrugged Lockwood, turning away with his bright pink feather duster to clean the higher shelves. “They weren’t exactly supposed to bring possible Sources into the country.”

Whatever it was, investigating it seemed more fun than cleaning, so I prised up the floorboards either side of the gap and wiggled the box free. 

The box was filled to the brim with packing foam, but when I dug it out and managed a first glimpse at what it was hiding, I nearly choked.

“What is it?” said Lockwood, whirling back around at the noise. “Are you alright, Lucy?”

My face pulled taut in a gallant effort not to laugh, I dug my hands into the box and pulled out its contents: a finely crafted china teapot, in the shape of a dick and balls.

Immediately, my hearing filled with spectral laughter as Skully burst into loud cackling above me, gripping his stomach and gasping for nonexistent breath. Quill and George weren’t far from joining in.

“Oh my god,” Quill gasped, wheezing as tears of mirth filled his eyes. “Tony, what exactly were your parents into?”

Lockwood’s face had gone a brilliant shade of red as he stammered for words. “It- It can’t be theirs- they- it must have belonged to the last people who owned the house…”

George took the teapot off me, which I was very grateful for as I was dangerously close to dropping it with my hands shaking from laughter. He cleaned his glasses on his shirt, placed them back on his head, then took the lid of the phallic pot and peered inside.

“Oh,” he said, the laughter immediately wiped from his face. “Oh, this definitely belonged to your parents, Lockwood.”

“What?” said Lockwood, eying the teapot from a distance as though weary it would blow up any minute. “What is it?”

George silently handed the teapot over to Quill before standing, going over to the sink, and dunking his head in the basin of what was now very cold water. 

Quill reached into the teapot and pulled out a stack of old photographs. I leaned over his shoulder curiously as he flicked through them and immediately started choking for real. I recognised Celia and Donald Lockwood from the few photos Lockwood had scattered around the house. I was not prepared for the positions they were in.

“What is it?” Lockwood insisted. “What’s on them?” He moved to reach for them but Quill jerked them out of his reach. Unfortunately, this put them right into Skully’s line of sight and the ghost started cackling even harder than before.

“Holy shit, those are some saucy parents he has. Come on, Luce, show the boy how he was probably conceived!”

“Nope!” I blurted, snatching the photos from Quill’s hand and lurching to my feet to make a beeline for the living room and - more importantly - the fireplace. “Lockwood, trust me, you do not want to see these.”

“If they’re photos of my parents, I want to see!” cried Lockwood, chasing after me.

It was then that the umbrella stand in the hallway fell into my path - entirely on its own, Skully would insist later - and my feet collided with it causing me to crash down to the floor, my grip coming loose from the photo stack and resulting in a whirlwind of erotic snapshots to fall down around me.

“Oh no.” Lockwood’s voice seemed very cracked and distant, and when I pushed myself up and turned to him, the poor boy had his hands clamped tight over his eyes, his face and ears tomato red. “George, please tear out my eyes!”

“Only if you tear out mine too,” George said, coming into the hallway with his hair dripping wet. “God, this is almost as bad as when I walked in on my mum-”

“Do not finish that sentence!”

“At least you don’t have to look your parents in the eyes after this,” George muttered, folding his arms over his chest. “Took me three months to get over that.”

“I’m going to have nightmares,” moaned Lockwood. “Lucy, please tell me you’ve picked them all up by now.”

Quill and I were systematically gathering them up and tossing them in the fireplace. Only when Quill had lit the fire did we give Lockwood the all-clear.

“I am never cleaning the house again!” Lockwood declared, collapsing against me with his face buried into my shoulder. I patted his back sympathetically.

“At least we got a new teapot out of it,” said George. “Tea, anyone?”

“There is no way I am drinking tea out of that thing,” said Lockwood. “Can we please get rid of it?”

“Or...” I said, spying the blackened skull perched on a shelf in the kitchen. “I have another idea.”

*

Holly returned to find us all - minus George, who was making sure there were no loose photos lying around - sheepishly sitting around the kitchen table sipping tea. The kitchen was clean, at least, but Holly didn’t even seem to notice, her eyes going straight to the teapot on the table.

“What. On earth. Is that?”

“Our new teapot,” I said matter-of-factly. “Like it?”

“That is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” said Holly, her nose wrinkling. “I have never understood the appeal of these things.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Quill, sipping his tea casually.

“I’m throwing it out,” said Holly, picking it up with the tips of her fingers like it was contaminated, which it probably was.

It was then that Skully decided to make his presence known by forming directly out of the ‘spout’, his ectoplasm contorted grotesquely into the happy farmhand.

Holly, to no one’s surprise, shrieked and hurled the teapot all the way down the hall where a loud thump and yelp ensued.

“Oh my gosh, George, I’m so sorry!” Holly cried, rushing down the hall with the rest of us at her heels to find George curled up on the floor, the shattered remains of the teapot as well as the skull surrounding him. “Are you alright?!”

George groaned and pushed himself upright to reveal his glasses askew and a bright red mark on his face in the perfect silhouette of a dick and balls. I tried to stop myself laughing and only half managed.

“I think I have a concussion,” George slurred.

“Hospital,” said Holly, helping George up and bustling him to the door. “Hospital, now.”

*

The nurse looked from the penis permanently etched onto George’s face, to the haunted look in Lockwood’s eyes, to me and Quill who were still snickering, before finally turning to Holly who she seemed to deem as the most sensible one of the group. She wasn’t exactly wrong. Perhaps she remembered us from the time George got a condom stuck over his head and nearly suffocated.

“How?”

“Dick teapot,” I blurted, trying not to look at Goerge’s face because if I did I would most certainly die of laughter. Unfortunately, this made me picture it again and I snorted anyway.

The nurse heaved a great sigh as if this was just the same old bullshit she had to deal with every day.

“Just once,” she said, “why can’t it just be ghost-touch.”

George rubbed at the imprint on his face, then seemed to realise it looked like he was wanking the dick off and stopped. “You know,” he said, ignoring me and Quill wheezing next to him, “I’m actually with you on that one, ma’am.”

[crusherthedoctor]

Sonic & Tails: Beyond the Stars - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The Dunes of Intrigue

“...What do you mean it's all connected? In what way?”

That was the question Espio demanded to get an answer for, as befitting of the Chaotix’s mystery solving status. Eggman continued to share his prideful superiority in generous quantities for all to see, no matter how dirty of a look everyone else in the room gave him.

“It's a small world, don't you know,” he said in an upbeat manner, with another stroke of the famous 'stache. He still refused to make any secret about his enjoyment of the proceedings. “This big blue globe of ours may have so much to see, but when you get down to it, all the mysteries of life have a relation. Some more than others, perhaps, but always to an extent.”

“Stop speaking in riddles, breakfast bozo!” Vector cracked his fists. “Get to the proper details!”

Charmy attempted to mimic his partner by cracking his own fists, but he wasn’t quite able to master it. Espio stoically rolled his eyes, as he often found himself doing, through no fault of his own.

“We're still here, if anyone cares...” a depressed lion muttered in his cage. He was on his side, head on hand, resigned to the fact that him and the rest would probably have to wait some more before they were so much as acknowledged, let alone set free.

“If it involves Chao...” Sonic pondered, rubbing his chin all the while. “Then it involves... Chaos?”

Eggman paused... before letting out a sudden, bizarre cackle. He puffed his chest, rubbed his hands, and leaned forward dramatically to confirm the hedgehog's interpretation.

“No.”

Sonic blinked in utter confusion. He exchanged looks with Tails, then back to Eggman. What on earth was he trying to get at then?

“How about the Black Arms?” Tails randomly guessed.

“No.”

“Little Planet?”

“Nope!”

“The Gaias?”

“Noooope!” Eggman's merriment only grew with each incorrect answer.

Sonic stared at the ground dejectedly. He was struggling to think of any other potential candidate for the correct puzzle piece to Eggman's mystery jigsaw. He threw his hands in the air.

“...Babylonians?”

“Ha ha! NO!”

The doctor cackled once more, clapping his hands like a seal, and fist pumped the air multiple times in triumph. “Clueless! Completely clueless, all of you! You're not thinking big enough! This is how it feels to be me, surrounded by nothing but idiots 24/7! And here I was considering lending you another hint, but since you lost the game, it's time for... the penalty.”

Right on cue, a small quake began, which increased in intensity every couple of seconds. The heroes zipped their heads around as poles were knocked over, banners fell over, and even the cages in the arena opened up with how aggressive the quake was. The scared witless inhabitants immediately got out of dodge, as if knowing things would only get even worse if they stuck around... which, considering it's Eggman, they had every right to assume that.

Despite losing his prisoners, Eggman didn't seem to mind, as he was far too giddy at his visitors’ reactions to the rumbling... which eventually simmered down... and at last came to a halt completely. The anthros weren't stupid though, and every one of them, young or older, put up their dukes. Something was coming, but they didn't know what.

“Alright, what's going on?” Vector pointed a finger at the scientist. He snapped his jaws menacingly, ready for some Scrambled Eggman if need be.

The madman fiendishly kept his mouth shut, crossed his arms, and wiggled his eyebrows knowingly.

Then, calmly, he clicked his fingers.

As soon as he did that, the entire roof of the tent was violently ripped to shreds by an unseen force. Everyone struggled not to fall on their sides as an extreme breeze suddenly filled the ring, though the doctor avoided its pull or push by protecting himself with a purple plasma shield. His throne soon broke off from where it rested, as did the mini-thrones that Orbot and Cubot sat on beside him, and it floated in the air triumphantly as his enemies witnessed exactly what he wanted to share...

To their horror, an absolute behemoth of an airship was now floating directly above them. Far greater in size than the Wing Fortress, the Flying Battery, the Egg Carrier... any and every airship he had made in the past positively paled in comparison to the gargantuan scope of this grim monument to one's ego. A far cry from the reds he was prone to plastering over his modern ships, this one instead took on a jet black colour scheme, though there remained several red accents. It took on the general shape of a blimp, yet it remained armored with high-tech to the last detail. If you could even see them from the tent's smaller frame of view, four lengthy wings could be spotted, two on each side, at symmetrical angles, in the shape of curved blades. A twisted parody of the doctor's own face could be seen on the front end, in pristine silver steel, with glowing red holes for eyes.

And of course, countless cannons and engines were planted all over. Because when you're Dr. Eggman, the dial starts at eleven.

“Oh my god...!” Amy gasped, as she struggled not to fall on her behind with the gale force at work.

“What's THAT ugly thing!?” Charmy questioned. He flapped his wings as fast as he could to combat the wind.

“Ran out of resources, doc?” Sonic called out to his nemesis, feigning a lack of interest, though he had to admit it looked pretty fearsome. “What happened to all your armadas that I smashed up? No more cash to rebuild them?”

Eggman belted out even more jolly laughter, as he stood on his throne like a little boy playing make believe with his action figures. His throne floated directly in front of the ship's view, and he gesticulated wildly. “This time rodent, I'M the king of the wind! One is all I need! In exchange for quantity, I have more quality than you could ever know! It has all the power of the Egg Carrier-NO, all the power of the entire Eggman Fleet combined! Behold, my greatest flying fortress yet! THE EGG CLOUDBURST!”

He sat back down on his throne with much pride, not bothering to acknowledge that neither Orbot or Cubot were in fact inside his purple shield, and thus were likely to get sucked away. They were both hanging onto their own thrones for dear life. “And I didn't pick that name for no reason, boys and girls! With this baby, so long as it’s nearby, any destination's wind and seas bow down to me and me alone!”

“...Sorry, what?” Tails blurted out in absolute bewilderment. “Are you saying you can control the weather now?”

“That doesn't sound nice...!” Cream held tightly onto a banner, as her ears billowed in the wind, with Cheese holong tight onto one of them.

“You fool!” Espio cursed as he attempted to stick to a wall, to no effect on account of just how powerful the wind proved to be. “No mortal can control such forces!”

Even Sonic couldn't deny that Eggman's claim was not a light statement. “How is that even possible? Is that what you're using the crystals for, which AREN'T yours by the way?” Even as his life depended on not poking the proverbial tiger, he never ceased the opportunity to jam a pencil through the doctor's bluster.

“Hohoho, you think this is all I have to offer? As glorious as it is, this is merely an alpha-project of mine, a small teaser of what's to come in a future paved with my brilliance! I have even more fun surprises in store, and boy oh boy, I can hardly WAIT to show you them... but until then, have a free sample of my fully operational Cloudburst! TTFN, ta-ta for now!”

“Don't let go!” Orbot advised to Cubot, as they continued holding onto their small thrones while their creator flew away to head inside his new Egg Cloudburst. On the ground, everyone was trying desperately to hold onto something, anything, even each other... But it was no use. As the eyes of the Cloudburst glowed brighter, the gale force dialed it up a notch, becoming an outright hurricane in the process. One by one, they were sent tumbling and flying across the night sky, while the tent finally caved in and crumbled into pieces entirely.

“Ahhhh!” Amy screamed.

“Woahhhhh!” Tails cried out.

“Don't get sick...! Don't get sick...!” Lutrudis struggled.

“I swear I'll get his money...!” Vector echoed.

Sonic glared at the Egg Cloudburst for as long as he could still see it, and cursed the doctor as he too was sent flying. “You won't get away with thiiiiiiiissssssss...!”

---

“URK!”

“Eck!”

“FFUH!”

“Ungh!”

Each of our heroes landed right onto the ground in a tragic heap. Sandy ground, to be exact. Tails and Cream had some leeway in that they were able to soften their impact with their tails and ears respectively. The latter instantly checked her bag in a panic, but to her relief, not a single Chao was lost in the hurricane.

Amy was not so lucky, landing squarely on her posterior, and while Lutrudis managed to soften her own landing with her own tail, it was to a more limited extent. If there was any consolation to be had about all their landings, the sand itself was not rough at all. In fact, it was some of the softest sand one could find.

And Sonic?

Well, naturally, he landed face first.

He grumbled incoherently as his face was deep into the substance. Lutrudis and Amy quickly helped him up, and he gave a small, somewhat distracted salute to both of them... before abruptly spitting out some sand from his mouth.

“Yuck... Why does this-” He paused to spit out more sand. “Why does this always happen to me...” he asked to himself, as he tried valiantly to remove the taste. “You'd think I could land on my back just this once?”

“Now we're far away from where we were, thanks to that stupid ship,” Amy mused. She turned to her left and right, and soon realised not all of the group was with them. “What happened to the Chaotix?”

“Must have got sent flying someplace else,” Tails reasoned, as he directed his spinning namesake away from his friends so that when he was getting the sand out of his tails, they wouldn’t accidentally go in anyone’s eyes.

“Oh no, will they be okay?” Cream worried, with her hands clasped tightly. Even if she barely knew them, she'd hate to think they got hurt, or worse.

“Ah, don't worry about them Cream, they'll manage.” Sonic sniffed as he looked around, scratching the back of his head. Something that stood out to him was that due to the night time, the sand was not yellow or orange as he would expect, but rather a soft shade of pink, which complimented the deep purple sky nicely. Sonic had to admit that this desert was a pretty pleasing one for the eye, even if he still hated the taste of sand.

“This is pretty common anyway,” he added, still looking around. “I meet up with pals, we get separated, then I meet up with them again. Happens all the time.” He snickered to himself. “Who knows, by the time we regroup with them, they might have actually solved a mystery!”

“So anyway, where are we now?” he asked Lutrudis, the one group member who would be the most likely to have an answer. “You know, aside from 'the desert', which could mean anything.”

“I'm not familiar with these parts on a personal level, but I know it's not that far away from home.” She took a moment to snort out that one speck of sand from her nostrils, which caused her a bit of embarrassment due to realising it was a rather unflattering look. Still, she continued without a fuss. “There's a train system around here. I don't think it's been used in an awfully long time, but it'll make our path easier, I know that for certain. Though with all the dangers that might be out and about in such dry conditions...”

“Pfft, those dangers will be no danger at all.” Sonic stretched out his arms, ready to go out into the great unknown. “We've done swell so far, what's the worst that could happen?”

Lutrudis simply looked at him, then switched her view to the endless mounds of arid dust. It's not been all that easy for her, as evidenced by how she had previously been sent flying by a hurricane summoned by a giant airship. But their combined skills have proven to work wonders, and there was no reason to start doubting its effectiveness now. Not when despite everything, she felt oddly secure, even in the midst of all the danger.

“You coming?” Amy called out, knocking Lutrudis out of her thoughts. Everyone else had already started exploring. “As if we'd leave you behind!”

The horse stared at Amy thoughtfully. Maybe this was just how it felt to have friends to turn to...

---

Dune Borders Zone

Act 1: Dark Canyon

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Roller - “There's only one Sonic, so these armadillo bots have come to kill and replace. They come in two forms: blue ones are straightforward and roll around without a care, while the red ones have more advanced AI, and can block your attacks if they're too conspicuous. Uncouth ripoffs, so they are...”

Sol - “The desert is overwhelmingly blistering as it is, do we really need to start a fire? They'll keep their fireball projectiles close by, but if you get closer, they'll expand their range by a significant margin, creating a widening circle of fur-intolerant flame... but they’ll also leave themselves open. ~Oopsie~”

Scarabesque - “Atop the dusty cliffs will you find these wily beetles, who use their plethora of boulders to disrupt your progression. At least the boulders are made of steel, and not... what Eggman is full of.”

Cactinaut - “The latest and greenest innovation from the Orbinaut family, not only can they spread their spiked projectiles - a common courtesy with this model - they can also inflate their heads afterwards. Not to imply a lack of faith in your independent rationale, but don't touch them when they do that.”

Bulldust - “Predictably, these rowdy sorts come charging at you on sight. Less predictably, they can kick up sand to obscure your vision, therefore giving them more chance of making your internal organs particularly unhappy. Perhaps Amy should consider a change of wardrobe...?”

Deputy Pawn - “I question the validity of their promotion. These yellow gunners don't just play out the part with their bizarre strutting, they're actually halfway decent shots. I'd say they've had their six, but I’ll bet they’ve got six billion more to spare.”

The deserts in Viridonia are the epitome of vast, and as you'll discover, it's not exactly a static desert, shall we say. You'll see what I mean soon enough... if you can make it out of here alive. But what's a couple of Sand Hills for a tourist like you? This may be a Dusty Desert, but you've been through loads of Desert Ruins before, so as long as you don't lose your mind and stumble into the Mirage Road, you'll make it through the Arid Sands in one piece... something something Sandopolis.

And I mean it when I say vast. This area is truly huge. The empty fields of sand can be spooky in its own way, but that's not to say there's nothing of interest out in the open at all. The sandy terrain is broken up by a selection of gigantic purple mesas, and wooden windmills that are larger than life. While the moon is the only thing that can be found in the purple sky, its sheer size casts some much needed light onto the pink sands below.

The colour of sand is not the only oddity around here, though. What else can you see all around you? Well, you can see cliffs... lonely trees... watering holes... crystals...

Amy: More crystals?

Tails: Out here in the open?

Sonic: Grey crystals, just like in the mountain!

That's right Sonic, the dunes are packed with the grey variety of crystals. No doubt Eggman's robots are after these ones too, so do your bit and knock them out for even entertaining the thought. The mining areas out here likewise contain plenty of them, but because it's nighttime, their muted shine does little to dispel the shadows that cloud the mines. Shallow pools of water serve as your main light source indoors, aside from the rotating flames of the Sol units.

Not that the outside is any less dangerous. It's not a complete desert package without everyone's favourite desert-flavored obstacle... quicksand. And oh boy, there's a LOT of quicksand around these here parts. It pulls you in, and it pulls you fast. But don't bring out the blubbering hysterics, for there is a way out of the situation should you need it. All you have to do is tap the jump button rapidly, and you'll be out of there faster than you can sue me for giving your thumb a blister. Remember that quicksand is a lighter shade of pink, so that's how you can tell it apart from the regular, safer sand.

Also note that an easy way to avoid quicksand entirely is by skimming along the oversized bones you see spread around the wilderness. What sort of fantastic creatures do these bones mark the remains of? Who knows, but hopefully they won't be spinning in their grave at the sight of bite-sized hedgehogs and foxes running along them like it's a skate park.

When you're up on the cliffs, or inside the mines, you can use the rickety pulleys to get yourself around. Do be careful however, because not all of them work the same way. Some of them go slower, some of them go faster, some go left, some go right... and if you're really unlucky, they can fall apart halfway through. Know the risks, and make a bold leap if it comes to that. Aside from the pulleys, you can also use the rotating windmills to get through the desert extra quick, though you're hardly any safer, for the Deputy Pawns will make a boisterous effort to shoot you down from below, when they're not occupied with their harmonicas.

Halfway through, you'll get to explore an abandoned western town. Any trace of civilisation here is long lost, but the town remains tall and proud regardless... Even if the red paint is a little chipped on some buildings, and some doors are half broken, and Eggman's goons are going full method actor and shooting the place up in search for you and your bundle of friends...

The noose in the center of town is also kind of discomforting.

Cream: What's that rope thing over there?

Amy: Um... you'll find out when you're older... maybe...

Tails: Maybe it's a weight system of some sort?

Sonic: I wish it was, Tails. Yeesh...

Lutrudis: Probably for the best that I wasn't around in the old days...

Interestingly enough, you can tell how far you are into the level by where the moon is positioned. See, it starts off high in the sky as you'd expect, but we're slowly reaching the early morning period, which means the moon will lower that little bit more with the further you go on. Whenever it lowers, it can have the side-effect of temporarily blinding you, so if you want to avoid the blinding moonlight, then simply hide behind a mesa for a second.

Not too often that you see a moonset, is it?

Towards the end, the moon has disappeared completely, and in its place, an equally mesmerizing sun slowly begins to rise into view. But pressing matters are afoot, for you can see plenty of patches where crystals should be... but aren't.

Lutrudis: These ones have already been taken... but by who...?

Sonic: Someone fast, by the looks of it... Really fast... Hmm...

The end of the stage is marked by the presence of a single building, even grander than the empty town we saw earlier. It looks even older, and equally worn out, yet it's still standing. As you crack open the capsule to free the local critters, you can only wonder what's inside... if there is anything inside...

---

Act 2: The Badland Express

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Turbo Spiker - “You can't touch them while they've got that huge drill, but be patient, and it'll fire away and let you do them in... you'll need to then avoid the flying drill at the same time, though. How kind.”

Bomber - “The name is commendably honest, if only to compensate for its unoriginality. When it opens the dome on top, it dispatches bomb after bomb, and will not stop in the slightest until you put it down. They never run out, because defying us is apparently worth defying logic.”

Vultron - “Well... they fly, otherwise they wouldn't be effective bird-based bots. But they're also crafty, and enjoy confusing you with their fancy loops and daring maneuvers. Let's hope their choreography is the only thing they're killing.”

Coalision - “These miniature choo-choos store an endless supply of black coal, and they'll be glad to share it with you while it's still hot... literally. It's a waste to be sure, but that holds true for many of the doctor's career choices, doesn't it?”

Returning Enemies: Roller Cactinaut Bulldust

The title is a bit misleading, because if we want to get onboard the train, we have to go through the station first. Luckily, since it's seemingly abandoned, we won't have to worry about needing a ticket... Unless that's what the robots are after us for.

Anyway, you start off just outside the station, lit up by a row of tall lamps. By this point, the sun is still rising, so now the surrounding sand is given a lovely shade of deep red, with a redder sky to match. Too bad you'll be spending most of this level indoors then, eh? If you want though, you can take a quick peek at the books in the nearby info center, which mention in great detail the once proud history of our poor station. It also name drops the Great Oasis, which is apparently where the train would be headed for if it were still in business...

Unfortunately, since the station is abandoned, the interior has seen better days by comparison...

Sonic: This place could sure do with some of Amy's decorating magic...

Amy: I'll say! All this dust can't be healthy.

Lutrudis: If I've got enough spoons in me, I'll gladly lend a hand.

Try not to get too spooked in here, because with the creaky echoing of the oversized rotating gears, intertwined with the cobwebs and scrambled papers, it can be easy to get a heart attack at the slightest thing... and I don't just mean the prices.

Your enemies are all too aware of this, particularly the Coalisions, who love to make a beeline at maximum volume, which echoes throughout the station. The bombs ejected from the Bomber units also cause an echo, but at least it gives you an idea of where they are. It's brighter in here than it was in the canyon’s mines, but it can still be pretty dark, though the sunlight that shines through the windows and the occasional glass ceiling will get you through. And yet, even the glass here can become an obstacle, as the Turbo Spikers are fond of sending their drills through them to make a dynamic entry.

Despite mostly taking place indoors, there are still the occasional outside sections, which include the rooftops. The rising sunlight is at its most gorgeous here, so feel free to bask in the sun despite being in a rush in the context of the actual story. Rollers are especially plentiful up here, in red and blue. They can even gang up on you if they feel like it, so don't stay in one place for too long. They're easier to deal with if you're playing as Tails, since a tail swipe is sufficient enough to deflect them while they're in ball form.

You'll know you're nearing the end when you enter an old diner in the station. Sadly, it too has long since decayed, but the “employees” will still do all they can to serve you... literally. On a plate. To Eggman. The Vultrons love to poke through the windows in the diner, so be on the watch for them, lest their fancy maneuvering cause your eyes to start swirling. If it weren't for all the decay, Amy would find an appeal in the cutesy aesthetic of the diner.

And not long after, you'll finally make it to an outside chamber, where the titular Badland Express rests in all its rustic glory... You know, this level felt a bit short, didn't it?

Nevermind that, are those burn marks on the ground...?

Has someone visited here recently...?

---

“Well, this is it... ~ta-da~” Lutrudis made use of appropriate jazz hands to befit a proper introduction for what rested before the lady and her friends. A red locomotive with golden accents sat alone and isolated, and even though it hadn't been used in years, it looked surprisingly healthy for its age, moreso than the depressing station it was cast aside with. Both Amy and Cream looked as though they might as well have been in a candy store.

“Ooooooooh...” Amy let out.

“Ooooooooh...” Cream repeated.

“Ooooooooh...” Cheese completed the rule of three.

“Doesn't look half bad for a crusty old train,” Sonic rubbed his chin as he examined the entire vehicle. “And this will take us closer to home? Er, your home?”

“That's the idea,” Lutrudis inspected the locomotive herself with hands on hips, and her tail swished out of interest. “Unless its course has drastically changed and it takes us to the arctic or something, but I'm willing to estimate the unlikelihood of that.”

“Shall we get going then?” Amy anticipated, anxious to see what the train looked like from indoors. Her own tail wagged slowly in excitement. “I love a romantic train setting...”

“Hang on, aren't we technically kind of... stealing this thing?” asked Tails, with a raised eyebrow and crossed arms. “Are you guys sure this is a good idea?”

His friends all exchanged looks with one another. Back, then forth, then back, then forth again. They returned their gaze to Tails without a word, all sharing the exact same blank expression.

---

“Good thing I learned how to do this,” Tails cheerfully quipped as he mastered the controls, and got the train rolling along without issue. “Or else this would be a lot harder.”

“Thatta boy,” Sonic ruffled his foxboy pal's head with a proud grin, to which the latter let out a humble chuckle as they walked into the next room. As it turns out, the Badland Express proved to be charmingly old-timey despite its lingering glamour. The dark green walls were filled up with muted diamond patterns, and the floor was softened by a comfortable red carpet. The curtains, sharing a similar shade of red to the carpet, were made of soft velvet, which Amy couldn't help but constantly brush inbetween her fingers, clearly enjoying the texture of it. Wooden banisters lacked any trace of dust, which in some ways was almost eerie, but they couldn't exactly complain. Even the seats were soft and snuggly, and they looked just as clean as the rest of the inside.

“So that's it then?” Amy asked Tails. “We're up and away?”

“Well, it's already moving,” he looked back at where the controls dwelled. “So unless something completely unexpected and unpleasant happens, we'll be totally fine.”

“...Yeah,” Sonic stated, out of slight concern. His eyes darted between different windows.

“Agreed,” Amy added. Cream simply nodded.

They all stood around for a few seconds, almost aimlessly so, until Tails piped up again. “Well, I don't know about you guys, but I think I could do with some shut-eye. I've barely had any since we arrived in Viridonia.” He looked back at the control room again. “Although... I guess I should stay awake to pay attention to the controls if something unexpected and unpleasant does indeed happen... But there won't be anything unexpected and unpleasant, surely... I mean, if I keep bringing it up, it won't happen, right...? I know how reverse psychology works...”

“Dude, chill. It's okay, you can go right ahead,” Sonic put a gentle hand on the fox's shoulder, and gave him a warm smile. “I'll stay up in case anything happens. You deserve the sleep.”

Tails looked up at his big bro, and slowly returned the smile in earnest. After all these years, the innocence in his blue eyes remained perfectly intact. “Thanks, Sonic,” he uttered gratefully, before he started looking around to find the nearest seat.

“I think I could go for a sleep too, to be honest,” Amy muttered groggily, as she rubbed both of her eyes.

“Me three,” Cream yawned as both herself and Amy sat down. This was followed up by Cheese letting out a yawn of his own. “And um, him four,” she added with a giggle.

“So...” Tails peeked at the window to remember the time of day. “I guess it'd be correct to say... Goodnight?... ...Good morning?... ...See you later.”

And with that, the orange fox instantly conked out on his seat as if he were inebriated, and the pink hedgehog and creamy rabbit similarly went into a fast snooze. Cheese snuggled up with his owner, and slept peacefully, as if sensing that no matter what struggles Eggman and his mechanical menaces would put them through from here onwards, everything would work out okay in the end. Once they were all asleep, Sonic made sure to carefully, quietly, move their bodies a little bit to ensure they were resting extra comfortably. He did this with all three of them, and he took an extra minute to slowly move Tails' namesake so that the three of them could lay their heads on them.

Satisfied with his work, he dusted off his hands, and gave his dozing friends one last look. As he watched them sleep, he realised how nice it felt to be on an adventure with the gang again. Not that he minded going out on his own by any means, but it had been so long since they were all together on a journey... Well, Knuckles wasn’t here, but luckily for them, they had someone to fill in his place...

He tried not to make too much noise as he tip-toed over to the table that Lutrudis was sitting by on her lonesome. Contrary to the rest of the group, she looked wide awake as ever, and her gaze was focused on the view from outside.

“Figured you'd be fast asleep as well.”

Her head briefly tilted left to acknowledge the blue speedster coming over to her, before it turned back to the window. “Eh, I'm not tired. My sleep schedule has a mind of its own, to my own chagrin.” She scoffed, albeit quietly so as not to wake her other friends up. “That's what this body does to you.”

Sonic looked at her silently for a couple of moments. Slowly, he took his hands off the seat he was standing behind, and sat down opposite of her at the table. He looked to his left, as if to find inspiration for a conversation starter. In the process, he took the time to admire the desert plains in all their vast glory. The sun was hiding behind several towering red mesas, but it wasn't enough to obscure the light completely. He didn't say anything at first, but after his brain focused on the endless red sand outside, a small burst of nostalgia sparked within him.

“You know, all this sand reminds me of my time in a book.”

“In a book...?”

“Yeah, the 1001 Arabian Nights... What, you're not familiar with that one?”

Lutrudis pulled up the arm of her long glove. “I'm familiar with the tale, obviously, but my knowledge of your time in it is unfortunately more limited, since you know... it's a book. It's considerably more challenging to locate records of what you went through compared to your other achievements.”

“Hmph, and I thought you were the Sonic Expert.” He grinned lightheartedly.

“Well then, perhaps you'd care to share the details, o brave adventurer?” She leaned her right elbow on the side of the window playfully, and rested her head in her hand. “I'd love to hear it. We've got plenty of time.”

“Err, actually, there's not too much to say in all honesty, heh.” He took a moment to adjust himself on his seat. “Just mostly me and a friend running after a genie.”

“An evil genie?”

“Unfortunately so. He had a few screws loose, that's for sure. Wanted to burn his world to the ground and remake it in his own style.” He scratched an itch inside of his right ear. “Kind of like Eggman, I guess.”

“All would-be conquerers do tend to feel similar after a while, don't they.” The horse's eyes looked to the side, at the desert fields. “Different flavors, but always the same greed... the same lust... gluttony... wrath...”

“Yeah... well, this guy did a bunch of uncool things,” Sonic continued, trying his best to not dwell for too long on what those things were, at least when it came to his ally from that journey. “Even turned a king into an undead husk.”

“Oh dear, really?”

“Yep. AND he cursed me with a fire spell. If I didn’t do as he demanded, the flame within would force me to kick the bucket.”

“Goodness...”

“I know, right? Guy was mental. But he wasn't free to be an evil dude for long. Because...”

“You came along?” Lutrudis couldn't help but add an affectionate ring to those words. “And made everything all better?” Her face lit up, and she didn't bother hiding her smile at the thought.

“You bet I did!” Sonic winked with two finger guns. “Sent that genie packing, literally! I beat him, humiliated him, sent him back in his lamp, never to be seen again. So the story could continue living, without his interference!”

“Of course it could...” Lutrudis sighed contently. She looked rather diffident, as if she wasn't all that sure on how to word herself. “You sure are a paragon to the people, aren’t you... a ray of light to everyone you meet...”

Sonic blinked twice, as the green equine's flowery compliments once again left him unsure of how to respond. If he wasn’t imagining it, he could feel his cheeks getting a little warm, and with possible hesitance, he let out a soft chuckle.

“So... you're just gonna believe all of that?” he asked jokingly. “Just taking my story about going inside a book at face value? For all you know, I could have made it all up.”

“Oh, I believe it. I utterly believe it...” The lady's expression grew even wider, as if the mere thought of Sonic doing his thing was enough to fill her with internal solitude. “There's so many crazy things out there, but so many beautiful things too. And you've stepped up to the plate no matter what comes your way, no matter how alien, or ancient, or ridiculous. So, when you say you went inside a book, to save another world from a corruptive influence... there's no doubt on my end.”

Her eyes opened up slowly, and they locked with the hedgehog's own. “It's hardly beyond your capacity, is it? You're like another world all on your own, in a strange sort of way... a world of majesty, and wonder...”

Her smile grew softer, and in time, so did Sonic's. The hedgehog failed to respond verbally to yet another kind remark, but deep down, he knew he didn't really need to say anything. His quills lowered, and he rested a single hand on the table, its distance not too far from her own. If it were to remain undisturbed, it's possible they could carry on with their quiet exchange forever.

Revealing herself to still be partially awake all along, Cream had secretly witnessed this scene for herself. Despite being half-asleep, her and Cheese exchanged delighted looks with each other at the display. They weren't necessarily sure what to make of it, but as far as they knew, their friends were getting along, and that was all that mattered.

As the rabbit turned back around, she noticed a closet that looked a bit ajar. Deciding to fix it herself, she quietly walked up to the closet, and grabbed the door handle, until her curiosity suggested she at least take a look inside to see if there was anything in there, after all these years of the train's disuse.

Alas, there wasn't much to write home about. Just some old-fashioned shirts, dresses, Metal Sonic...

Wait.

“AIEEEEEE!!!!!”

“What the-” Sonic stood up in an instant, as did Lutrudis. Amy and Tails likewise woke up just as fast at the sudden noise, and all of their eyes widened as Cream, now more awake than ever, stood in paralyzed fear at the sight of Metal Sonic standing right there in the closet, towering over the poor bunny like a cybernetic grim reaper. Not a moment too soon, the robot immediately raised a claw, ready to strike down at Cream and grab her bag of accompanying Chao in the process.

Sonic was predictably the first to react, and ran up to give his copycat an uppercut, which appeared to dislocate the robot's head... before it jolted back down as if nothing happened, complete with a hellish metallic clang. Thinking fast, even at the expense of her sensitive limbs, Lutrudis made a daring leap over a table and kicked Metal back into the closet before he could lay a finger on either Sonic or Cream, and instantly followed it up by putting one of her arrows through the door handles as a makeshift blockade. Picking Cream up by her side, she turned tail as fast as she could.

“I've got you, honey,” Lutrudis assured her friend. “But we must hurry, he won't be stuck in there for long!”

Lo and behold, mere seconds later, Metal's fist came shooting straight out of the wooden door, and his second arm used its strength to create an even bigger hole in the now ruined closet. He stood once more, stepping slowly out of the closet's remains, and not once did his gaze turn away from Sonic’s, who was standing directly in front of him, with his friends at his left and right.

“He's been on board this whole time?” Amy let out a disturbed glare. Her grip on her hammer tightened, as she was all too familiar with this machine. “That’s not creepy at all!”

“What's he spying on us for?” Tails wondered, his tails tensing up at the presence of Eggman's notorious exterminator.

“Let's hope he's not around long enough for us to find out,” Sonic muttered, as he directed a sneer at the peeping tom. “Nice of you to drop in, Metal! I'm the one you want, right? I'm the one you want to prove you're oh so superior to! So what are you waiting for? Wanna be Sonic? Come and get it!”

Metal stood still for what felt like forever, until he raised a single finger, and ominously waved it across his own neck. He then clenched his fists, and started marching through the hall, slowly, towards his eternal rival. As Sonic extended both of his arms to defend his friends, the metal menace started up his engine, ready to go...

---

BOSS: Metal Sonic

It was only a matter of time before Metal Sonic interfered with our affairs. He may be different from our regular, heroic, green eyed, sociable Sonic in a lot of areas, but if there's one trait he has in common with his organic counterpart, it's a ruthless level of persistence. This will become very obvious over the course of the encounter, so you better be quick on your feet for this one. You have no excuse if you're too slow, given who you are.

The unique thing about this match is that you'll be going through all the different sections of the train, as you do all that you can to keep Eggman’s top enforcer off your back. But it's also not merely an escape sequence disguised as a boss, because you actually have to make an effort to fight back at the same time. Amy will be your main assistance here, since Lutrudis will be occupied with keeping Cream and all the Chao on her person safe and far away from the mad robot... that, and someone has to make sure the train is going where it's supposed to while it's being terrorized by a killer machine. A train delay is the least of your worries.

You start off where you were in the previous cutscene, by the tables, and all you can do for now is avoid the lasers that come shooting out of Metal's chest. It's possible to use the tables for cover, but don't rely on them for too long, since with enough laser power on Metal's end, they will eventually break apart like tissue paper. If you want to fool around with him, you can spin dash under him as Sonic, or fly over him as Tails, though if you get too cocky, he can halt the proceedings by grabbing you and slamming you on the floor. Amusingly enough, you can actually throw broken table pieces at your opponent, which you'll want to do since although it merely annoys him, any brief distraction is everything here, and you'll be given time to properly damage him without getting swiped at by his claws. Pretty straightforward so far, right?

After four hits, Metal will change tactics by flying outside the train. What's he doing? Why, he's absorbing electricity from the nearby power lines! He's never done this before... not in his regular form. Granted, a power line may not be on the same scale as a living being, but wasn't he only able to do this vampiric business when he took the form of Neo Metal Sonic some time ago? Perhaps he's been given an upgrade by the good doctor... one that doesn't require an undignified appearance.

Let's not ponder for too long about it, because now Metal's lasers will cover two thirds of the ground, which is bad news for you due to how little free space there is on the train. He'll also throw in some new moves, namely charging straight at you, and firing one energy sphere after another, which have a tendency to home in on you. You'll want to get beside Amy during this, as she's quite good at knocking them away with her hammer.

By this point, you'll be chased through the different bedrooms, all of which are fortunately empty, but if you VERY QUICKLY search the drawers, you might nab yourself some ring capsules to help you out. Although be careful of a jump scare, for one bed inexplicably has a skeleton inside... Seems to be a recent skeleton too... was this Metal's doing...? Let's forget we ever saw it, and hope we don't end up the same way.

Tails: I think I'm too young to be seeing stuff like this...

Eventually, you'll end up in the engine room, which is filled to the brim with old pistons and gears. As you may expect, these count as obstacles, so try not to get crushed by them while you're focused on Mr. Lookalike. What you want to do here is time it so that a piston comes crashing down when Metal is underneath. He'll grab it effortlessly with his robotic strength of course, but in the process, he'll accidentally leave himself open for you to do your thing. A spin dash or tail swipe will do the trick in this case. This will get more difficult each time, as Metal proceeds to destroy the piston you used against him afterwards. So what happens when all the pistons are destroyed? With nowhere else to turn to, there's only one option... out the window.

You are now climbing the side of the train, and don't think the awkward position will convince the evil duplicate to go easy on you. Luckily, your climbing speed is fairly quick, though diagonal movement can be something of a minor inconvenience. Know the right times to go vertical and horizontal, and you should be golden. Where is Metal Sonic during this sequence? He's the camera apparently, as it switches to Metal's perspective as he fires his lasers at your climbing self. You'll also have to navigate carefully around more homing spheres at the same time, because you know what they say... so you don’t need to be told. Keep a cool head, and you'll get through without getting your tail(s) singed.

Finally, at last, you end up - where else - on top of the train. Metal isn't playing around here, and he makes that clear by pulling out a couple of grey crystals from that magical area that all anthros place their belongings when they don't have pockets. Seeing them in his hands is quite alarming, to be sure...

Sonic: So it was you who took them... bring it, faker.

Not wasting any time, the robot absorbs more power, this time from the crystals. His limbs shake violently, as if he were struggling to adapt to his new energy. A shadowy aura surrounds his body, which provides an eerie contrast with the sunrise behind him. His eyes light up brighter than ever, glowing with malicious intent, and he beckons his enemy to come forward with the back of his hand... Well, who are we to disappoint? Let’s show him what we’re made of.

In this final section, you run and hop along the roof, and you'll want to keep track of time here, because if you take too long, you'll reach the end of the train and have nowhere else to go. Metal will make a projectile of himself here, by zooming through here, there, and everywhere, with dark energy seeping from his being. He's also fond of whipping out his famous Black Shield here, and he can rev it up like your own spin dash. This has the side effect of ripping up the roof a fair bit, even creating a few holes in it. Jump at the right moments to avoid the holes, swerve at the last possible moment to avoid the zipping Black Shield, and when Metal is about to turn around to give it another go, quickly pounce on him like a man possessed. He'll bring out the lasers again at this point, which are now given a darker aura of their own, but you've got this in the bag.

Once you give him four more hits, the next cutscene will commence. Congratulations, you've bested the notorious Metal Sonic... for now...

---

Sonic and Metal Sonic were still on the roof, kicking and swiping away at each other as they both got closer to the front of the train. Tails and Amy ran as fast as they could to make sure Sonic wouldn't fall off the train entirely, but Metal wasn't making that easy for them by firing devastating lasers in the middle of his scuffle with the hero, all the while he was pounding Sonic's body into submission.

They soldiered on anyway, dodging the blasts left and right, until they managed to dogpile onto the robot themselves. Despite the three on one advantage, Metal was more than capable of taking all three of them on at once, and announced that in no uncertain terms by clutching Amy and Sonic by their heads. As he choked Sonic by the neck, he stared straight into Amy's eyes, as if to inject the same fear that he instilled in her during her youth on the Little Planet.

Before it could have any lasting effect however, Tails slammed down on Metal's head with both of his tails, and while he was rewarded with an eye laser for his troubles, Amy seized the opportunity to whack the droid on the side of his chest with her hammer. Regaining some of his energy once his neck was accidentally let go, Sonic then spin dashed Metal's body in the air not once, not twice, but three times. Yet the doppelganger recovered, and made a threatening beeline towards the one he despised above the rest.

While all this was going on, Lutrudis and Cream were at the controls, and they could see from the increasing amount of holes on the roof that things were getting serious... and that they also just had an idea. With a firm nod from both of them, they quickly looked all over at the controls. It went without saying that neither of them had driven a train before, so to say they were unqualified to drive would be something of an understatement. Luckily however, in this urgent scenario, there was only one thing they needed to do...

“Hold onto me,” Lutrudis said to Cream, which the bunny immediately obeyed, knowing what was about to happen. Lutrudis then called out as audibly as she could to her friends above. “Guys! Quickly! Grab onto the roof!”

Initially fearful as to whether they heard her or not, her doubts were put to rest by Sonic staring straight ahead, his eyebrows raising in realisation, and he soon repeated the equine's words to his teammates. He then planted his chest on the roof and grabbed onto two edges of the nearest holes, which was followed by Amy and Tails doing the same thing.

Metal Sonic, meanwhile, tilted his head, as if he were amused by their sudden action. But he got over it quickly, and slowly raised a claw to tear into Sonic's undefended back...

...that is, before he was abruptly sent flying off the train and out into the open desert at insane speeds, like a twinkle in the distance.

As the train itself grinded to a halt, the three on the roof hadn't quite grasped what just happened. Realising the coast was clear due to both the train stopping and Metal disappearing, they slowly let go of the holes, and looked all around them to make sure they weren't about to get a nasty fakeout from their enemy. As Tails and Amy took a moment to catch themselves, Sonic looked down at Lutrudis and Cream, who both grinned sheepishly.

“Sorry for the jolt,” Lutrudis muttered with a nervous shrug. “You okay up there?”

Sonic, not quite able to speak at the current moment, simply gave a half-dazed thumbs up. Cream couldn't help but giggle to herself at this.

“How much do you think this will cost in repairs?” Tails asked with a hint of dread, as he examined the sorry state of the entire train. Amy let out a shrug of her own, followed by a nervous laugh.

---

After Lutrudis reassured her friends that she would pay for the damages once Eggman’s activities were dealt with (assuming anyone found out about what happened to the train), they took a collective moment to analyse where they actually were now that the train had arrived at its one and only stop... and to say they were experiencing a mild form of culture shock would be accurate.

For although they were still in a desert, with the immense heat and intense sands that came with it, it was not at all like the one they had just been through. Far from the foreboding western cliffs and abandoned shanty towns, the tastes they were witnessing now were undeniably of the eastern variety. Even from afar, the streets were glittering, decked out in majestic blue carpets, and the tallest towers in view were purest white and gold. Townspeople were freely exchanging idle chatter with each other, a far cry from the lonely wilderness they had seen beforehand. And although they had spotted the occasional watering hole prior, here you could find water everywhere, including by the streets themselves. All completely fresh, at that. Shops of all shapes were also inviting their intrigue, beckoning for them to check out their contents.

And for that last detail alone, Amy was instantly smitten.

“Good timing, I think we could all use a drink,” Sonic suggested, fanning himself in the scorching heat.

“This place looks wonderful! Let's have a look around!” Amy bounced merrily, seemingly unaffected by the heat, as she clasped her hands together in excitement. “I love places like this! So full of culture! I wonder what dresses they have here?”

Not necessarily arguing with her insistence, Sonic marched on down to the exotic streets, his team following after. Of course, it didn't take long for them to split up. Cream stayed with Amy, and Lutrudis did the same with Sonic, while Tails went on his own. A grand total of five seconds ensued before Amy dashed inside a clothing shop in an adorably gleeful frenzy, with Cream being considerably more relaxed as she happily followed.

Even Sonic had to laugh at his friend's constant energy. He knew full well that she always had a taste for exquisite fashions.

He turned around, and instantly grew curious as to what Lutrudis was paying close attention to. Upon witnessing, he couldn't help but let out an impressed whistle. By the window, in three rows of ten, were a selection of identical silver necklaces, each of them customized with a different colour of jewel, and a simplistic pattern of the same colour. As far as he could see, Sonic could spot them in ruby, sapphire, emerald, garnet, amethyst... and a bunch more that Tails would probably recognise before him. He was reminded heavily of the Chaos Emeralds he was all too accustomed with... and all the other colorful minerals he had seen in his young life, including his friend's own crystals.

“They look gorgeous, don't they,” Lutrudis muttered dreamily, with adoring eyes. Not that she had any intention to buy any for herself, simply getting the chance to observe their beauty was enough for her. They were probably more deserving for someone else anyway.

“Oh yeah, definitely, they look stunning.” Sonic's eyes went to the sapphire necklace. “Heh, come to think of it, I bet that one would look spiffy on you,” he casually commented, and carried on walking with a carefree smile. Lutrudis looked as if she was caught off guard by his comment, and after a few frozen seconds of taking it in, she shyly fiddled with her ponytail.

As she got ready to follow the Blue Blur however, she immediately paused, and looked back at the necklaces, glancing up at the emerald and garnet ones in particular. She turned her head to Amy, who was far away in complete and utter awe at something else. Her focus turned to Cream, then back to Amy, then back to the necklace selection. Her own smile grew as she rubbed her chin in thought. They're a bit pricy, certainly, but it would be worth it...

Tails was examining a bunch of unique gadgets in a different store. All of them appeared to resemble clockwork animals... or at least he assumed they were meant to be animals, but they still looked pretty eye-catching all the same, even without taking their shiny coat of paint into account.

“Any you fancy?” asked the camel shopkeeper, as he drank his glass of water. He was clearly hoping the young fox would buy even one, not least because it would provide a fair bit of dosh.

“Just passing through,” Tails politely declined. “Where did you get these things, out of interest?”

“Oh ho, they're relics of a bygone era, my friend!” the camel boasted, as he alluded to what may or may not be an elaborate ruse. “The Ancients of Viridonia were very advanced in their time, you see.”

“Right...” The kid seemed unsure about the story’s legitimacy, but he wasn’t going to argue with the man. “Are those... crystals you have, back there?” he questioned, pointing towards the small hill of grey shinies behind the shopkeeper. The casual display of them in a shop was weirdly offputting.

“Oh no, not the genuine article, I'm afraid. They're merely... fantastically sculpted replicas. Definitely didn't pluck them anywhere, no siree.” He crossed his arms and nodded firmly, though his eyes betrayed him by shifting left and right.

“I see... well, see ya!” Tails happily waved farewell as he left the shop. Once he knew the fox was gone, the camel muttered to himself out of annoyance. Getting anyone to buy these gadgets was hard work these days.

Resigned to his job, he took another swig of his glass... then promptly spat the contents back out upon seeing a green robot standing beside him, with a katana right at his throat. Where did he come from...?

“Crystals. Now.”

Meanwhile, Sonic was walking around aimlessly, taking in the environment more than what there was to buy. It was typical that he recalled the Arabian Nights adventure to Lutrudis beforehand, because this scene made him reminisce all over again, to the point where he questioned whether this place or that tale came first. His mind went back to his guide of that world...

Shahra... Another friend he hadn't seen in a long time, but one that he nonetheless hoped was doing well. He knew for certain that she ended up better than she started, with her former partner no longer having any control over her.

The hedgehog frowned, as the memory of Erazor Djinn came flooding back to him. He only had to deal with him once, and he was grateful for that, lest he be continuously confronted by one of the vilest evils he had ever faced. He shivered in disgust at the memory of all that he did, whether it related to Shahra or otherwise, and he could only be thankful that the malevolent spirit was last seen in his lamp, in a pool of magma, never to be released again.

...Unless Eggman found out about him and used one of his lava-resistant machines, but he hoped that wouldn't happen. He's already doing enough as it is with all the mayhem he's sent the hedgehog's way in Viridonia. The last thing he needed right now was for Erazor to come back.

His frown deepened. Speaking of the doctor, his own actions were getting pretty concerning as well. His risks were still growing in scale, and his cruelty was still growing in scope...

“Hey there, blue boy.”

Sonic looked dazed for a moment as his contemplations were interrupted by another voice. He looked all around him to figure out where it came from, only to express surprise as he turned to a familiar face, who was currently relaxing in the shade on a carpet.

“Rouge?” He raised an eyebrow. “What are you doing here? Where’s your groupies?”

“Oh, they're busy with other things, dearie,” she casually announced, as she took out a small mirror to check her tufts of hair. “So I decided to spend some time over here, my home away from home. I mean, it's partly on business for G.U.N. as well, but that's the great thing about being me, isn't it? You can work and play at the same time.”

Her eyes went to Sonic, who was still kind of shocked to see her on her lonesone. “Why so surprised? With all the treasure around here, surely it'd be more of a shock if I wasn't here.”

“Well, yeah I guess, I just...” He sheepishly looked to the side. “It's been ages since I've seen you on your own.”

“Hmm, has it?” The bat continued adjusting her makeup without a care in the world. “I'm not handcuffed to them, you know. I have my interests, and they have theirs... although Shadow could really do with pursuing more of them.”

“And how has Knuckles been doing? Haven't seen him since the last time we all teamed up.”

“What, am I his caretaker?”

Sonic remained awkwardly silent, not sure what to say in response to the accusation. Rouge let out a light chuckle, and carried on.

“I'm kidding, he's doing fine. He seemed pretty pleased with his latest defense system for the Master Emerald... ~but let's see how long that lasts~”

The hedgehog turned his head slightly, and his suspicions arose. “You're not thinking about nabbing anything in THIS place, are you?”

Rouge mockingly put her fingers to her mouth, as if she were deeply considering it. “Well, who knows? We'll just have to see, won't we? Sure is a good thing I have money, right?”

Sonic paused again to take her words into account, before finally smirking at her joke. With all the tales that go on about her thievery, it made sense that they could be a little exaggerated sometimes.

“Besides,” she added. “Someone else is hard at work with the stealing around here. Believe it or not, but I’ve actually been attempting to track them down... and not just because I’m slightly bothered that they’ve been beating me to the punch.”

“Someone else...?” Sonic thought. Who could she be referring to? Metal Sonic?

As this was going on, Tails and Lutrudis came on over to where Sonic was, and it didn't take long for them to notice who he was chatting with.

“Hey, it’s Rouge!” Tails greeted. His own history with the bat may be something of a complicated and frankly weird one, but he was happy to welcome her regardless. Lutrudis likewise gave a little wave of her own, even though this was her first time meeting her.

“Oh, hey!” Sonic was all too eager to make the necessary introductions. “Rouge, this is Lootru-...Latrue-...Trudy. This is Trudy. Trudy, Rouge.”

“Another playmate of yours, hedgehog?” Rouge raised an eyebrow of her own, followed by another chuckle. She rested her chin on her hand. “My my, where do you get all of them?”

“...Pleased to meet you as well,” Lutrudis replied as she shook her hand. Her body language made it obvious that she wasn't quite sure what to make of Rouge, given the latter's somewhat mixed history, but she was willing to give her a chance, since she was aware that the batgirl had helped her friends out plenty of times before. “Liking what you see around here, I presume?” she asked to strike up friendly conversation, with her hands clasped behind her back.

“Truly,” Rouge answered. Her voice was dripping with bliss. “Believe me, this place is a treasure of its own.”

The horse looked a tad puzzled at her comment, but before she could ask for an explanation, Amy and Cream soon arrived. Both of them appeared to be incredibly overjoyed, and the amount of bags on Amy’s person did not make it a mystery as to why.

“We have GOT to come back here when Eggman's done with! You'll never guess what we found! So many dresses, so many hairpieces, even found a new bowtie for Cheese...!”

The pink hedgehog paused, as she acknowledged Rouge's presence. Her arms lowered a little, and her head shifted slightly away. While not wanting to be rude, she was certainly conflicted about this twist.

“Oh, hey Rouge,” she muttered with a somewhat half-hearted wave. Cream's wave was more enthusiastic by comparison.

“Hey,” Rouge said back. The pink girl's suspicions were not lost on her, but she didn't bother commenting on it.

As if sensing the potential awkwardness of the situation, Sonic quickly changed the subject, as he clapped his hands with much gusto. “Say Rouge, I know you don't normally hang with us, but uh, Eggman's doing his thing again and endangering the planet like always, and we thought maybe you'd like to help us kick him up the butt again for being a maniacal idiot?”

The bat let out an overly dramatic sigh, with a raised leg in the air, as she prepared to stand up and stretch her wings out wide. “Well, if you care that much about my assistance...” She fluttered her eyes at the blue one, to which he just sort of looked in the opposite direction, clearly used to this behaviour. She laughed, even as Amy proceeded to put her hands on her hips in mild annoyance.

“Go on then, I'm game. Might find that thief along the way, and I do love a good thrill, almost as much as I love my precious jewels... Almost.”

With a roll of the eyes, Sonic sped off further into the desert in search of more robots to bust open, with his friends - and Rouge - in pursuit. Seconds after they left, an oryx walked out of the building that Rouge had been resting beside, holding a sizable glass of fresh lemonade. Preparing to serve, he looked down at the carpet she was using, and quickly realised the carpet was now on its own.

His smile turned upside down... until he looked to his left, then to his right. Checking the coast was clear, he started gulping down the lemonade himself.

---

Act 3: The Great Oasis

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Clamer - “Resting by the oasis are these brightly colored clams, who just so happen to conceal a portable cannon. It's a risk to take them on while they have it out, but it's an unavoidable one since you'll merely bounce off their azure exterior otherwise.”

Skorp - “Now this is a vexatious one. They already have a good defense as it is, but not only that, they can sling their pointy tail in your direction, and considering how far it can reach, it's extremely easy to underestimate. I suppose even a maniac can make an effective design twice a day.”

Sandworm - “They're worms, and they come out of the sand... Yes, that's right, yes indeed. They do like to catch you off guard though, but with a keen eye, you can catch their shuffling through the substance.”

Swordsman Pawn - “These purple guards are full of showmanship, but those scimitars prove they can back it up. Their skills are as sharp as their blades, although they do like to goof off if left to their own devices.”

Neo Djinn - “Now the doctor thinks he can improve mythology! Goodness sake... They appear to have some control over the wind, as they can strike you down with lightning, or hit you hard with weaponized gust. Never had a foe like him, huh?”

Floatin' - “I'm not sure if anyone informed the doctor, but these are meant to help save lives. These flotation rings are essentially circular blades, and should you catch them while they're spinning, you might not have anything left to catch with.”

Returning Enemies: Sol

The previous half of the desert may have been sparse in civilisation, but this area more than makes up for it. Life is brimming everywhere in this exquisite landscape, and with the sun up well and high now, the sky is now a subdued mix of pink and cream. It's a more inviting sight than the canyon, so what are you waiting for? Head on down to the Arabian... Days!

In town, you'll find rooftops to climb, and just as many marketplaces to vandalise to your gamer's content. Indeed, you actually can interact with several of the fruits on the market, to the point where it's possible to use them as projectiles against Eggman's robots, just like in the Tricky Tropics. Though I imagine the dealers won't be too pleased that you’re messing around with their fruit like it's no big deal...

“Could you, uh, stop that please?”

“Hey, that's not yours!”

“How am I supposed to ship these to Sapphire Tundra if you're spreading them all around on the sand!?”

“I don't care if it's for 'hero business', the least you could do is PAY for it.”

The snazzy carpets won't be the only drop of blue you'll be seeing around here, for even in the center of town, there's a reason why this is known as the Great Oasis. Small river trails can be found along the perimeters, large fountains can be found aplenty, and specialised domed houses even come with minature waterfalls. Even within the bazaars, there are plenty of blue roofs and patterns along the walls, though if you take a closer look, you can see more specific patterns involving anthropomorphic creatures, with claws outstretched.

First there were the carvings in the Gleaming Meadows... then the carvings inside the mines of Zephyr Valley... now we have these patterns right here. What's the full story? It pertains to the Ethereal Zone, that much is obvious, but to what extent...

Anyway, if you think the streets have got more than enough aquatic brilliance, wait until you see the oasis itself. Bright green grassy patches surround the round lakes of healthy water, and the palm trees remain arched, as if to pay respect to the tranquility of this land... either that, or the coconuts they hold are really heavy. Marble pillars are free to traverse and knock over, and you can also find plenty of statues and monuments, which remain magnificent in scale despite the expected rust collected over the decades. These statues seem to resemble... something reptilian possibly, but it's hard to make out for definite...

Ironically, despite all this water, there's barely any underwater sections, although it is possible to have a swim for some Lightning Shields and other goodies. Or maybe you just want to admire the scene, as when you're underwater, everything has a turquoise sheen, and the schools of fish you can find come in many a healthy colour. Watch out for the Clamers though, they can hide under the water just as they can by the side of it.

And remember, Tails is more suited for swimming than Sonic, since he has the distinct advantage of actually being able to swim. Though like always, it's far from impossible to explore under the blue as Sonic anyway.

Out of all the enemies here, the Skorps and Neo Djinns will be those ones, if you know what I’m saying. Skorps need no introduction or explanation, and I regret to inform you that the 3D plane has done absolutely nothing to diminish the obnoxiousness of their fiendish strategy. As for the Djinns, because they can attack in more than one way with their wind magic, it means they can attack you directly AND push you into other hazards. Doesn't help that they like to hang around with the faithfully stereotypical Swordsman Pawns.

When you reach a particularly large river, a cruise ship will be bobbing along it, known to all as the SS Sandline. It wouldn't be out here if it was meant to be ignored, would it? Hop aboard the cruiser, and pay no mind to the folks on board who are no doubt perplexed as to where you arrived from, and why you're here.

“Is that Sonic the Hedgehog? I thought he wasn't good with water...”

“Who cares about that? Get me his autograph, pronto!”

“Did he get in for free? I had to pay an extra 50...”

They'll have to wait for their autographs, because we're too busy avoiding the pack of Floatin' that managed to find their way on board without anyone noticing. They blend in by hanging on the walls outside, but their colours make them easy to spot in spite of that. As for inside the Sandline, there's not much that will kill you, but you're welcome to spin around the roulette tables, go for a splash in the jacuzzi, and swing along the chandeliers. Contrary to what your gut is telling you, they won't fall off, though they can go a bit wild with their directions if you swing on them for longer then necessary, so best to not spend too much time on them in any case.

The end of the cruiser is characterised by the use of a jacuzzi fountain, which will send you soarin' through the cloudless air like a free bird. During which, you're treated to yet another gorgeous view of the sky and the dunes alike.

Cream: It's so pretty out here!

Sonic: *pulls out a camera* Heh, this would make for a great group photo! Lean in, everyone!

Amy: What? Up here!?

Tails: Seriously?

Lutrudis: I hope my anxiety isn't showing...

Rouge: Be sure to get my good side, please.

The end of this stage is represented by a considerably emptier segment of sand, with little water to be found. This will last for a small while, with seemingly no progress made... but eventually, from a distance, you will start to spot some pools containing another liquid entirely. A black liquid, to be precise.

And along with that, a peculiar cavern system that appears to be part stone, part machinery, with a spider web’s worth of pipes poking in and out. Wanna bet our rotund arch-fiend has a hand in this?

---

Act 4: Petroleum Province

Lutrudis’ Badnik Logs: Tunnelbot - “This machine was present during the regrettable destruction of Angel Island's ruins, wasn't it? Well, there's a bunch of them now, and they're equally as fond of using the rubble against you, alongside their twin hydraulics.”

Flybot 767 - “See those alarms on the ground? Please make an effort to not set them off, for if you do, you'll get a small handful of these divebombing fowl on your tail... Although, maybe we SHOULD set the alarms off, since that way we can bust them open and get their living batteries out...? I'd hate to leave those adorable critters inside their robotic cages...”

Spitlick - “I think this is based on the gila monster, but you never know half the time with these do-no-gooders. Pure venom in design and demeanour, they'll happily lob a blob of it straight from their mouths... Why doesn’t it melt them...?”

Motor Pawn - “Using their hot new rides, these red daredevils leave a brief trail of fire wherever their wheels take them. Almost makes up for their tacky leather jackets.”

Rock Golem - “What the... This isn't a robot at all! It's a creature made entirety out of arid stone! It doesn't appear to be sentient, yet it follows the doctor's commands... How...?”

Sand Demon - “This isn't a robot either! These... entities seem to emerge from the desert itself, with the desire to provide you a sandy burial. What on earth is going on here...?”

Returning Enemies: Sol Bomber Skorp Neo Djinn

Another immediate segue into the next act, and no surprise that Lutrudis has her bandana over her face for this one.

Eggman is no stranger to oil profiteering - after all, he's got an ocean of it to his name - but this facility is more complicated not just in design, but also in navigation. Sure, you have your expected pipes and catwalks, even sharing an identical purple and green colour scheme, but since this place goes in and out like a rollercoaster, it can be easy to get lost. Not only that, but quicksand has returned, this time a murky brown, so you'll have to avoid that along with the black pits of oil you see all around. Note that it's still very much possible to prevent yourself from sinking in either of them by constantly jumping, though in the case of quicksand, you'll have to be that extra bit faster.

Oil Ocean is not the only Eggman compound you'll be reminded of in this level. There are also gimmicks and even visual references based on the infamous Launch Base, which largely include its twisty tubes, its yellow and semi-arabic structures, and those irksome Flybot 767 models. Don't be fooled into thinking this is merely Oil Base however (Launch Ocean?), for despite the resemblance to both past zones, there's some original flair to be found as well. Not so much on the outside perhaps, but on the inside?

The interior sections are where this place gets very intriguing. You've got your hollowed out tunnels, your cavern railways, your palace hallways... hang on, palace hallways? For whatever reason, Eggman has decorated the inside as though it were an actual middle eastern palace, complete with golden elephant statues, cobra-shaped pillars, and exotic chambers. Why has he done this? Come on, you know the answer to that. Why does Eggman do anything?

Unsurprisingly, Neo Djinns can be found in heavy abundance in these areas, and while they don't hang around other robots as much in this stage, they instead hang around with other Neo Djinns. Try not to get caught inbetween their wind elemental antics, or else you could end up being the unwitting ball in a game of wind tennis.

Tunnelbots will also be all too happy to welcome you, by drilling the roofs above, in the hopes that the resulting debris will knock you clean out. As for outside, you'll have cylindrical, armored trains to deal with. It’s evident that their purpose is to transport the oil to wherever and whatever Eggman needs it for, so we might as well smash them up to reduce the amount by at least a little bit, although try not to get splashed by oil in the process. It won't kill you, but it'll make your movements rather sluggish for a brief period of time. Shouldn't it be seriously unhealthy for our heroes though? Shhhh, Sonic doesn't care about it, and neither should you.

Their cleanliness, on the other hand...

Sonic: Trudy's got a shower in her castle, right?

Tails: I hope so, this oil is kind of hard to get off.

Amy: This better not stain my dress too much...

Rouge: A high quality bath is in order, I reckon.

Cream: I think the Chao would appreciate being clean again too...

Lutrudis: It's unsanitary, but if it means putting a stop to the doctor's doings, then I'm willing to trudge through... And yes, I do have a shower.

Sonic: Whew, what a relief!

Lutrudis: *giggles* Surely you wouldn't seriously think I'd lack one?

Sonic: Well, no, but...

It's at this point that the Badniks will start using the oil against you. The fireball-toting Sols will use an old strategy of theirs by dropping their fireballs above their respective pool of oil, thereby setting the whole pool aflame, and Bombers will set off explosives that unleash unstable geysers of oil, which you can spot early on by paying attention to the cracks in the hard sand. If all this wasn’t enough, Motor Pawns love to leave their blazing trails near oil.

But as Lutrudis acknowledged in her Badnik Logs, some of our enemies here aren't Badniks at all. Or at least, not your typical Badniks. The jaguar-esque Rock Golems and snake-like Sand Demons are equally common here, and both of them will cause an extraordinary amount of trouble for you if you're not careful. Of the two, Sand Demons are the greater evil, since their tendency to hide in the sand itself makes them harder to spot before it's potentially too late. The Rock Golems are more straightforward, and will settle for pouncing on you with all their rock hard weight, but since they're big boys, it can still be somewhat hard to avoid them.

If you're not too preoccupied with them, you might spot an Egg Robo perched atop a single catwalk, paying close attention to your progress. Rouge recognises him right away... and so do you.

Rouge: There he is! There's the REAL thief you're looking for!

Sonic: Ugh, not THIS guy...

Shinobi: Hello.

After a polite wave, he'll then disappear as if he turned invisible... then he'll reappear on top of a different catwalk, as if he came out of thin air. A new trick in his ninja guidebook, from the looks of it. If Espio were with us, he might be impressed. For now, you'll have to chase down the lime green Hard-Boiled Heavy for a bit. Don't panic, it's not a true chase, there's no timer or anything. You just need to not die while you're following him. You can do that, right? Although with the increased amount of deserty beasts and oil fires, you'd be forgiven for kicking the bucket once or twice. (Three times is pushing it.)

Once you seemingly have Shinobi cornered, you know in your heart that he won't be going down without a fight. And that's very much true...

Shinobi: You, all pests. Interceptors will be vanquished. Observe, and despair. The guardian... shall rise.

...only, it's not him we'll be fighting today, as he mysteriously waves a single hand in the air, rhythmically. Puzzled at first, our heroes aren't sure what to make of it... until it becomes apparent that it's some sort of enchanting hullabaloo, and before even Sonic can react quickly enough to interrupt his routine, he's successfully summoned something real bad. REAL bad.

How bad, dare you ask? Out of the desert pit below erupts a tower of sand, chiseled into a muscled physique, and we see its full appearance in all its terrifying glory: a grimacing, multi-armed, weapon-wielding... thing. Is it a monster? A robot? A statue? It really doesn't matter for the time being, because all we're focused on is putting it back to sleep.

Amy: What the heck is THAT?

Rouge: You're asking me!

Sonic: Come down and face me like a true Eggman robot, ninja man!

Shinobi: No. Important matters to attend to. Your opponent lies here, today. Let battle, commence.

BOSS: Desert Goliath

And with that, Shinobi has left the scene as quickly as he was introduced. The disappointment is understandable, but don't worry, we'll see him again one day, and we’ll be ready. For now, we'll have to focus our attention on... this lovely fellow.

A desert-themed boss in the middle of a circular ring arena. This feels familiar, doesn't it? But since this guy has four arms, each with a weapon in hand, you'll have more on your plate here. And on top of that, each arm has a different weapon. Those weapons being: a scimitar, a cannon, a clawed clamp, and a morning star. The good news is that Rouge will frequently drop rings from the air to help you out. The bad news is everything else.

You can guess how each of the Desert Goliath's arms will operate here. When he uses the scimitar arm, he'll slash at the arena, creating two fiery shockwaves from both sides that you must leap over. With the cannon arm, he'll aim at three different areas and launch balls of green plasma energy. This is probably the hardest weapon to avoid due to how fast he is with it, and how fast he turns around, but you'll know where he'll fire away because there's a brief pause before he does it. Should he use the clawed clamp, he'll reel back the appropriate arm for a few seconds... then IMMEDIATELY make a grab for your character. Finally, with the morning star, he'll put the unique strategies aside and simply attempt to crush you into dust with it, a total of five times to be exact.

So what's our strategy then? It's not like there's a giant button on his head. No, there isn't, but there is a way. It'll require a few steps... and it'll also require good ol' Miss Hadeer to whip out her bow again. This time however, it's not the yellow crystals she'll be using... It's the blue ones.

First, notice that the arena includes six metal pillars, each of them sporting a circular pattern that just so happens to resemble a bullseye mark. When the Goliath uses the cannon arm, you'll want him to aim at one of these barriers so that the plasma will come right back at him. As expected, this alone will not hurt him, but it will temporarily paralyze him... and grotesquely, his chest will ever so slightly open, revealing a stone structure within that looks a lot like a heart. That's your cue to go, Trudy!

Lutrudis: Here I go! Time to... chill out!

With a launch from her bow, an ice crystal-imbued arrow will be fired straight at the monster's chest. She might miss on the rare occasion, but not as much as she would miss in previous boss battles, for her aiming is still improving even more as she grows used to the heat of battle. This will freeze the Goliath's “heart”, thereby immobolizing the entire beast even further through the power of video game logic. Well, it worked with Chaos aboard the Egg Carrier back in the day, didn't it? Waste no further time and strike that chest while its stone organ is encased in ice. You'll be rewarded with a pained scream from the titan, and the match will resume.

But that's not all there is to it, is there? Ha ha, you're getting savvy about this, aren't you. Sure enough, he'll predictably get more aggressive with each hit, he'll increase the amount of plasma shots, the amount of morning star slams, he'll get a bit faster each time... But then, after the third hit, he'll suddenly and jarringly change tactics completely, a fact that he makes apparent by sending all of you flying far away from the original arena. The Chao staying safe in Cream's bag are rather shaken by this.

Chao: Chaoooo!!!

Cream: Hold on, little guys!

Sonic: Jeez, this big lug needs a chill pill... and we've already given him three!

You land on your derriere on an open terrain, and after some rumbling in the sand, the Goliath will rise once more, letting out a furious roar despite not a single muscle moving on its stony, frowny face. Now he'll try combining the powers that his arms bestow upon him, often using the clamp to throw you onto the ground before slamming you with the morning star right after, or using sword slashes and plasma shots in unison.

And it's only getting from bad to worse, because a fifth arm comes bursting out of his back. Unlike the initial four arms, it doesn't resemble an arm at all, but rather a horribly mutated scorpion tail. This tail will be the absolute bane of your existence if you don't stay on guard, because it comes with a special kind of poison that - should you be unlucky enough to experience the full injection - will slow you down to 2006 speeds for a whole fifteen seconds. Not pleasant, to put it nicely.

You could use a little leeway here, couldn’t you? Well never fear, Rouge is on the job. You'll have to wait and avoid the Goliath's attacks for a while, but soon enough, using her bat expertise, she'll belt out a couple of sonar waves to distract the beast. It won't distract him fully, since he's got multiple arms to spare and all, but two of his arms will be swinging away at Rouge, leaving you with the other three to deal with. Which three arms remain your own problem is randomized each time, so cross your fingers that the scorpion tail isn't one of them. Since he's stretching out his body between you and Rouge, his chest will keep opening again without him noticing. Lutrudis doesn't even need to use her ice crystals now, since its rocky heart is already weakened and sensitive from all the prior freezing. Quickly bash it with all your might whenever the chest opens, and keep away from him at all other times. He'll get angrier and angrier, and predictably faster in the process, but you'll manage.

Three more times, and with a final ear-piercing scream, the titan will fall, crumble, and clutch the ground as he slowly sinks back into the sand. Looks like Shinobi's pet needed some extra lessons.

---

“So what was up with that thing?” Tails asked to the group, as they all took time to gather themselves after the confrontation. The fox's heartbeat was still thumping. “I don't remember the Heavies being able to do THAT.”

“I don't remember ANY of Eggman's junk being able to do that,” Amy added, still out of breath herself, resting on a stone wall nearby. “First a giant airship that can control storms, and now this... This is just getting crazier and crazier!”

“On top of sending Metal Sonic and the Heavies all after us... and that Wraith thing,” Sonic thought to himself, with a clenched fist. He didn't look pleased about their growing power. “It's like the Phantom Ruby... but it’s all real. And those bolt brains were bad enough already.”

“Maybe that Mr. Robot was using crystal power too?” Cream suggested. In all fairness, there was no reason to doubt it. The Chao poking out of her bag were at least relieved that the giant sand abomination was gone. Cheese, meanwhile, was hiding behind the rabbit's ear, still unsure as to whether or not the sand abomination really was gone.

“We can't afford to let them obtain too many,” Lutrudis firmly stated, after she caught her own breath with her hands on her legs. “As powerful as they are, an individual crystal isn't enough to summon a giant raging sand fiend, and I also suspect a single one cannot command the weather like it's nothing, though at least the latter seems to have limited range for now...” She briefly paused to fan herself. “We know the crystals can stack up or combine their abilities if used together, and it's possible that the more they have on them, the closer they are to getting a taste of the Ethereal Zone's true potential...”

The horse's eyes widened subtly, as another undesirable thought came to her. “And the only crystals we saw around here were grey crystals... the less potent ones. Yet they were able to power up Metal Sonic greatly. If they got their grubby mitts on colored crystals, and started stacking them up... mixed with Eggman's unique imagination... we cannot let that happen.”

“Funny you mention that,” Rouge raised a playful finger, with her other hand on her hip. “As it just so happens, I've gathered a few reports of what I've learned about them while I’ve been visiting.”

“Reports? For G.U.N?” Sonic questioned with much suspicion, as he placed both hands on his own hips. “For what reason?”

"Oh, you know, safety of the population, yadda yadda,” the spy replied, as if it were basic knowledge. She soon frowned at Sonic's tone. “Unless you expected something else?”

“Well, I wouldn't put it past them to have shadier motives...”

“They're not the same as they were back then.”

“They DID go after me like a bunch of crazies,” the hedgehog muttered with great distaste, eyes closed. “I still can't believe they mistook me for Shadow.”

“Look, they didn't actually mistake you for-”

“Don't care.”

A brief moment of silence ensued. Tails and Amy weren't sure how to address Sonic's lingering thoughts about the G.U.N. ordeal, and Cream barely knew anything about them anyway. At the same time, Rouge knew the hedgehog well enough to know deep down that he probably wasn't going to be convinced otherwise about the current state of the infamous military organization for the time being. And true, she couldn't exactly blame Sonic for feeling that way, but...

Lutrudis' eyes switched to and fro between Sonic and Rouge. With a deliberate clearing of the throat, she decided to break up the tension. “Well, if Miss Rouge is okay with the idea, how about we go back to my place and go over her reports there? We're a lot closer to my area now, thankfully.” She gently nudged Sonic with a wink and a cheeky smile, to lighten the mood. “You can finally get that shower you wanted.”

“Oh, sure!” Sonic perked up in an instant, and rubbed his hands in childlike glee. “I can't WAIT to be clean again!”

“The Chao could do with some breathing space too, I guess,” Amy motioned towards Cream's bag full of them poking out. The desert heat was doing a number on them. “They've been in there for a while now, poor things.”

“Fine with me,” Rouge agreed, with a casual shrug. “And don't worry, I won't take anything... important.” Another smirk couldn't help but manifest on her lips, as she glanced to her side at Sonic. "Lover boy has provided much entertainment already.”

“Whuzzat?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, before I forget,” Lutrudis switched her perspective to Amy, as they began marching back home, with the green one in front to lead them the way. “They might be a little messy thanks to the oil hijinks, but I found something for you while we were in town.” She looked down at Cream, who was nuzzling up against the horse. “You as well.”

“Ooooooh...?” Cream beamed brightly.

“Ooooooh...?” Cheese repeated.

Amy's intrigue was also clearly piqued. She smiled humbly at her friend's generosity. "You shouldn't have, really. But what is it?”

“You'll see,” Lutrudis smiled in return, and playfully winked, with a tap of the finger on her own forehead. “Just, uh, might want to clean them off first when we get back.”

---

In the middle of the barren desert, Heavy Shinobi appeared out of thin air once again. The round ninja glanced at the beautiful sight around him, yet its luster did not appear to enrapture him, so much as it was merely given acknowledgement.

As he stood on his own - or seemingly on his own - a mechanical claw came bursting out of the sand, followed by an identical claw. As they scrambled through the sand, creating a round pit in the process, the ominous figure of Metal Sonic slowly raised from the pit. He stared directly ahead, in the same direction the ninja was facing. His fate had left him visibly banged up, but he didn't seem to notice... or more likely, he just didn't care. Not when that accursed copy was on his mind, as it always, always was. He continued staring straight ahead, his body tensing up, with cold, bitter hatred coursing through his circuitry. He was down, but as long as the fake was out there, he would never be out.

Shinobi turned to Metal Sonic. He shared the latter's silence. With how stiff his own body language was, it was unclear as to what exactly his thoughts were on the robotic hedgehog... If he had any particular thoughts, they would have to be saved for later, as a third presence revealed itself.

“Well?”

Metal and Shinobi both looked up to see their master hover down in his famous hovercraft. Despite cleary knowing from Metal's dented state that Sonic and his friends were still alive and at large, Eggman's shining optimism shared throughout his Viridonian operations remained consistent even now...

“Crystals have been obtained,” Shinobi explained, as his scarf swayed seamlessly in the hot wind. “Weak crystals, but plenty. They are yours.”

“Greeeeaaaatttt,” Eggman replied in a jolly sing-song tone of voice, his grin refusing to falter even once. He turned to Metal, not fazed in the least by the latter's defeat. “Roughed up my boy, did they? Well don’t be glum, we'll get you into shape for Round 2 very soon. Perhaps you're in need of some practice with those crystals of ours... and we've got plenty of them now. They may have messed up my lovely refinery too from the looks of it, but there's no time to worry about such smalltime matters.”

He opened his arms at the sun, confident as ever. “The sun is shining on me, gentlemen. And it shall remain that way.”

“In addition,” Shinobi spoke up. “He has footage.”

“Footage...?”

He nodded his head towards Metal for confirmation, and without a word, the droid looked down at his chest. After a few seconds of charging up, it released another beam of light, a completely harmless beam this time around. Within Eggman's line of sight, a rectangle was formed from the light, creating the illusion of a screen. Said illusion became even moreso, when it began to play the promised footage... the footage that Metal recorded aboard the train... It didn’t take long to catch his interest... all of his interest... He leaned slightly back, and crossed his arms, as he kept watching.

“You came along? And made everything all better?”

“You bet I did! Sent that genie packing, literally! I beat him, humiliated him, sent him back in his lamp, never to be seen again. So the story could continue living, without his interference!”

“You sure are a paragon to the people, aren’t you... a ray of light to everyone you meet...”

“The tale that he mentions... could be of use,” Shinobi mused.

Eggman didn’t respond, despite the promising offer. While the talk about great and powerful genies may have caught his interest on any other day, his attention today was already taken...

“So... you're just gonna believe all of that? Just taking my story about going inside a book at face value? For all you know, I could have made it all up.”

“It could be worth looking into, sir,” the green robot mentioned again, though deep down, he had already subconsciously acknowledged that the doctor was completely uninterested. He did not give a single rudimentary thought to that aspect of the footage. He was captivated by something else entirely.

“It's hardly beyond your capacity, is it? You're like another world all on your own, in a strange sort of way... a world of majesty, and wonder...”

Eggman kept watching. His goggles were glued to the screen, as if it was of utmost urgency. Even after the footage ended, and the screen provided by Metal Sonic faded away, the scientist stayed perfectly still, taking a few precious seconds to contemplate exactly what he just witnessed. Because even though it was, by all accounts, a mundane conversation between two of his enemies...

“...Something's up,” he finally stated.

Shinobi turned his head to Metal, in what could be interpreted as puzzlement. When the blue robot predictably gave no verbal response, the Heavy returned his gaze to Eggman.

“I thought this was business as usual,” the doctor started, with his usual compulsive gesticulating. “Another pig to the stew. Fiery cats, telekinetic hedgehogs, chocolate-obsessed dog-imp... thingymajigs, now posh horses. Sure, why not. They overfilled ages ago, what difference is one more at this point? More for me to put down.”

He quickly sneered. “But there's a... look he shares with this one. I've seen that look. I see myself in the mirror every morning, I KNOW that look. And let me tell you, this is not like him at all...”

His Egg Mobile slowly turned 90 degrees to the left. The scientist rubbed the side of his head, as if he was still taking in his newfound information. And yet, he looked oddly invested, maybe even... excited...?

“Could it really be...” he continued, practically muttering to himself, as if there was no point to his two accomplices being there. “Never in my wildest predictions did I expect him to...”

“His habits do not differ to me,” Shinobi commented, as if to question what the doctor was getting at.

“No, not externally,” Eggman emphasized, as he leaned over with a clenched fist. “He ACTS the same as always, yes. Same stupid face, same stupid swagger, same stupid everything. ‘Hi, I'm Sonic the Hedgehog, please punch me in the face’. It's all the same... But it goes deeper than that. It's the little things, the details that the average joe wouldn't notice... But I'm not your average joe, and when I see that stupid smile curve a tiny bit differently, when I see his eyes grow ever so slightly, when I hear his cocky swagger grow lesser, even a tiny modicum... I don’t write it off as nothing.”

“Your initiative, sir?” the Heavy requested, as he slowly pulled out his frosty katana. His subsequent tapping of it against the palm of his hand made it not too subtle that he already had an idea in mind himself. “Suggestions on what to do?”

“Oh, we won't DO anything, not yet,” the doctor firmly answered, though the smug glee in his voice made it perfectly apparent that this was not in any way a benevolent decision. “We'll carry on as normal for now, and we'll let this little panto continue on for a while longer... see if my theory has merit. I've got a new surprise party to deploy, and that's plenty of time for you to brush up on those crystals, isn't it Metal?”

As still as a statue otherwise, Metal Sonic responded by projecting a miniature illusion of the organic Sonic into his own hand... before crushing the illusion slowly, digging his sharpened digits into it with violent intimacy, until it faded out of existence. He stared up at his creator the entire time, and although his expression remained the same, as it always did, his body subtly shivered, as if he were eagerly anticipating the next opportunity to brutalize the alleged copy.

Eggman's Mobile spun around clockwise in a perfect 180, as he continued to bask in his new revelation. The sunlight reflected in his goggles, making them appear pure white.

“And if it IS true - and it will be, because I'm never wrong - then oh... oh ho ho... this is gonna be sweet...”

A chilling laugh echoed throughout the desert.

---

Back to Chapter 5...

To Chapter 6-7 Interlude...

[firstagent]

Adventure: (2020) Episode 05: The Holy Digimon

In this episode, we’re horrified to discover that the cool story that’s been more or less carrying the show really does have essentially the same plot as Digimon Frontier.

As much as anything, one of the forces propelling the show forward has been the mystery driving all of the events. You’ve got the interference with real world infrastructure, the feathers powering Omegamon and their connection to Takeru and Hikari, and how both of those are directly steering Taichi and Sora to this temple. There’s often an element of mystery at the start of every season regarding the odd circumstances allowing these kids to partner with monsters. Usually it fades away once the first villain is introduced and everyone focuses more on what’s trying to kill them rather than why. This time around the mystery offers enough teases to suggest something really textured and compelling. But the kids arrive at a bunch of answers earlier than normal, and we’re a little disappointed to learn it’s basically the same routine we always get.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: “long ago there was a battle between good and evil, good won through great sacrifice, and now children have to tap into an ancient power to stop a new threat.” This is the same formula as the original Adventure, Zero Two, and Frontier… maybe even Tamers if you squint just right. This isn’t necessarily a problem: it’s a proven formula for a reason, and the point of reboots are to retell old stories through a modern lens. It’s just unsatisfying to have four episodes of fun intrigue only build up to something so ordinary. Especially when the notion of chasing after angels and resurrecting the spirits of ancient warriors feels like a pale imitation of Frontier. Hell, the angels are even poised to be Seraphimon and Ophanimon again! There are worse plots to mimic than Frontier’s and there’s time to develop more, but something so underwhelming stands out in a show that’s looked so strong.

Everything’s holding together fine, but it’s one of those things that makes you stop and question what’s really remarkable about this series. One thing’s become clear: at this point, it isn’t the human characters. We can stop and adore these kids for charging into the action head on and being their best selves. But it’s episode five and seeing them already being their best selves isn’t all that engaging. We gave Sora a pass because everything else clicked so well (and because we never get enough of Sora at her best), but now that the story is poised to be so average, we’re looking elsewhere for our superlatives and find ourselves digging more than we would like.

Unlike with Sora, there are nuggets to be found with Koshiro’s proper debut. They just aren’t handed to us. He’s very nonchalant about being inside a Digimon’s stomach, but be assured that he is in fact aware of this despite his focus on gathering information. You can’t always be sure with him. While his head is in the game, his need for information and consideration for others come awfully close to faults when he chooses to leave the relative safety of Whamon to both see what’s attacking him and spare him from the abuse. He even insists that Tentomon drop him to let him attack the Tylomon, a sweet visual that sets up the inevitable evolution. And after the danger, his refusal to elaborate on a rare moment of emotion adds something compelling, especially mixed with his instinctual selflessness.

It’s there, but in too small a quantity for it to be a compelling draw. With only three human characters present we should be getting more out of them. Taichi and Sora continue to roll with every punch thrown at them, so many in this episode they actually come off as bland and invisible. Piyomon ends up being the standout in this group, calling out uncharacteristic behavior in the Dokugumon and coming up with the big breakthrough against their web. She and Agumon also have a wonderfully complex reaction to seeing the ancient warriors: obvious shadows of their Ultimate forms. Their emotional connection to things they don’t remember (including Agumon not recalling Omegamon) is worth acknowledging, but again, now that it’s clear what’s going on there, it can only do so much to move things along.

My Grade: B

Loose Data:

Soundbirdmon is a pretty versatile little guy, and a nice way to provide both a spying network and get a high number of varied Digimon under enemy control. It also gives Koshiro something to sniff out in the middle of the Tylomon fight. We’ll see how far they can stretch the power of sound waves, but for those essential purposes it’s effective.

The funky shapes of the data inside Whamon suggests that it’s fragmented, a nice substitute for portraying digestion.

A lot of usual suspects in that band of angelic Digimon, but Rasielmon and ClavisAngemon are notable participants.

Reinforcing the notion that the Digital World’s connection to the internet is going to matter is how the Valdurmon entity considers it an unexpected wildcard in its plans. Let’s hope it makes for a nice wrinkle in this affair.

Man, they freak out a lot about not being able to break through the overhead spider web only for it to get resolved trying the most obvious solution.

See reviews of every Digimon episode at Digimon: System Restore! Support the site by joining our Patreon!

[the-sleepy-silurian]

Women Of Remorse Chapter Two

     “We cannot ignore our past together, only decide how it will shape our futures apart”

Available on AO3 here: (x)

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     Night had fallen, and the light of the seven moons combined with twinkling gems and lanterns cast a warm glow over the inner courtyard. Two figures were visible in the ambient splendor, seemingly in the midst of some form of training.

    “Try again princess,” Praxina cooed from her perch in the bejeweled tree. “It’s not like it could be any worse than the rest of your creatures”. All of the hesitancy of earlier was gone and a wicked grin was just visible from behind a polite hand.

    Talia could only grit her teeth and glare furiously at the girl lounging on an outstretched limb above her head. Dozens of failed attempts ran about her feet-or at least tried to run-many of them were, rudimentary to say the least. Even the dog shied away from her grotesque, flawed creations. Sweat beaded her forehead, and her robes-impeccable only hours earlier-were caked with dust and covered with grass stains. Her parents would flip out if they saw her like this. Speaking of flipping out, her new “friend” was starting to really annoy her.

“You are the worst student I’ve ever had...” Praxina mumbled gleefully.

“I’ve been doing it exactly the way you did!”

“And you’ve been doing it exactly wrong!”

    This time the girl had gone to far. Who was she to speak to her like this!?! How come only she could summon animal playmates!?! And why was she still smiling like that?!?!

    “It’s not fair!” the bluenette yelled and stomped her foot. As she did so a huge azure circle sprang from underfoot. The xerian felt a surge of magic coursing through her. Tingling from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. She closed her eyes until it passed, only to open them again to the sound of an earsplitting roar. Standing before her and reaching up past Praxina’s branch was a hulking creature with blue fur and eyes.

     Suddenly face to face with a set of gaping jaws, Praxina squeaked and jumped down from the tree. Landing nimbly at Talia’s feet, she shattered what were left of the princess’ previous efforts with a flick of her wrists. Turning towards a still seething Talia she said sweetly

    “Congratulations your highness, I knew you could do it.” Crouching down to pet the returning dog, Praxina calmly endured the ferocious looks of both Talia and her bear as they turned towards her. “What’s wrong your highness, don’t you like it? I’m sure I could teach you to summon another Earth creature, but I’m afraid you don’t have all night to spend in a courtyard with the likes of me.” she mused, not bothering to look up.

    “How did I do that? What did you do?” Talia demanded sharply. “Izira’s always yelling at me for not training enough, I shouldn’t have been able to pull this off...”. Her voice trailed off gloomily as she gestured vaguely to the huge form of the creature that had wandered over to a bush and was now trying to eat the decorative jewels. The girl with burgundy hair rose sharply, standing directly in front of the xerian, making sure to punctuate each word perfectly.

    “I. Didn’t. Do. Anything. This is simply the power of letting emotions into your magic. Do they not have feelings in Xeris?” she asked coyly. The bluenette’s face burned, she was always being told to be more serious. 

“Izira says disciplined magic is durable magic”

    “Speaking of your sister, I think it’s your turn to teach me princess” Praxina bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet. With a sigh Talia turned to her eagerly awaiting “student”. How different could Xerian magic possibly be?

“Which spell did you have in mi-”

“Crystimito” came the to-quick reply.

“A disguise spell? What makes you think I know that high level stuff?”

  “Because highness”, the girl recited in a singsong voice as she paced in circles around Talia “the princess of Xeris is well known throughout the lands for her pranks and undignified fun. It wouldn’t be to much to assume she knows a thing or two about disguises now would it?” She came to a stop behind Talia, and punctuated her last words by draping herself smugly over the bluenette’s shoulder.

   Talia shoved her off begrudgingly, her guilt riddled across her face. This was all the answer the servant girl needed and she stood happily awaiting her next orders.

“Fine, but you're going to get in trouble y’know...”

“You only get in trouble if you get caught. You of all people should know that Princess.”

  Talia smiled, they really were similar at heart. Drawing herself up to her full height she glanced disdainfully at Praxina, whose face dropped. With a few seconds pause she soon gave her best impression of her own tutor in Xeris: a haughty woman with no time for childish things.

   The bluenette’s voice became high and reedy as she mimicked: “Your magic is undisciplined, sloppy, and lacks technique but with the proper training I think you could have some potential.” With a wave of her hand and a short command Talia transformed herself into the girl standing before her.

   “Now lets see you try that ”, the double leered as the burgundy haired girl struggled in front of her. This continued as the next few minutes stretched out agonizingly slowly.

“Whats wrong little girl? Lost your nerve?“

    Being insulted by her own reflection was to much and soon Praxina’s anger got the better of her. With one last shout she overcame her panic and recited the spell. To her horror however, she couldn't make a full body transformation. Instead of looking like the Princess of Xeris she had merely succeeded in turning her hair blue and changing her uniform into Talia’s ceremonial robes.

   Talia really did try and keep up the act as long as she could, but the charade couldn’t last. Soon the fake Praxina’s hastily stifled giggles became to powerful, and she began to shriek with laughter at the sight before her. As she did the transformation spell wavered, until it shattered completely and regular Talia was left laughing in the dirt.

“Stop laughing!” Praxina huffed indignantly as she pulled at her new locks and strange clothes.

“Why not? You laughed at me earlier. Now we’re even.” Talia wheezed out as she gradually calmed down.

  Not one to be humiliated twice, Praxina bit her lip and tried the spell again. This time it worked, and soon Talia was looking up at her own copy.

“There! Now we’re really even. A spell for a spell.” She held out a hand to help the true bluenette up and the two exchanged a genuine smile.

   They practiced their new spells until the lantern’s candles burned low. The bear rumbled around and played with Praxina’s dog as Talia threw stick after stick for them to fetch. Praxina changed her form constantly to look like the other beings she knew: the dog, then the bear, Princess Talia, a boy with burgundy hair, and a tall man with green hair. Neither of which Talia recognized.

A familiar voice suddenly rang out into the night

“Talia! There you are, mother and father have been looking for you ever since the summit ended! Where have you been all this time?”

   Izira ran from the shadows and into the courtyard, enveloping talia in a bone crushing hug.

“Izira, you- you’re smooshing me!”

Setting her down, the crown princess gave her little sister one of her no-nonsense looks

“Serves you right, what were you thinking?! Sneaking out of an important meeting like this?!”

“But Iziraaa I was just sooo bored. And besides, you’re the one people are counting on, nobody cares about me...”

“Talia you know that’s not true, it’s part of your responsibilities as princess to represent Xeris and that means being on your best-”

Izira stopped short when she realized they had an audience. The surprise on the white haired woman’s face when she saw the dog, bear, and a terrified Praxina with her nose practically on the ground she was curtsying so low was enough to make Talia stifle another laugh.

“Y-y-your highness” Praxina stammered, not daring to look up. Talia smiled and ran over to her new friend.

“It’s just my sister, c’mon stand up” the bluenette said comfortingly while pulling at her arm. Praxina’s eye flicked madly from the crown princess to the ground, rooted in place despite Talia’s best efforts until she saw Izira give her a nod.

Smiling warmly at the two girls now clinging to each other Izira asked kindly: “and what is your name?”

“Praxina your highness, how may I be of service?”

“Ugh, stop saying stuff like that, Izira has enough people to wait on her already” Talia groaned. Turning to her older sister she puffed up her chest and announced: “And she’s my friend, you cant take her from me” the bluenette harrumphed and crossed her arms.

The bear, seemingly sensing its creator’s mood, mirrored her stance. Seeing the strange blue creature seemed to bring Izira’s focus back to the task at hand.

“What on Ephedia have you been doing? Have you two been out here the whole night?”

“We’ve been training! Y’know the thing you’re always on my case about?” Praxina winced at the lack of respect Talia showed to her sister with every new sentence.

“It’s true your highness. Princess Talia has shown great potential with summoning magic” she gestured at the creatures that had appeared at their side.

“Yes, certainly a....unique pair of creations. Where did you find-”

“Oh, and I taught Praxina something too! Show her, show her!” the princess needled the other girl, her excitement at showing off palpable in the night air.

With a reluctant glance at Izira, Praxina transformed into her new friend, presenting the crown princess with two little sisters; one bursting with excitement and the other riddled with guilt. Overlapping voices were quick to break the shocked silence.

“You showed her crystimito! What were you thinking?”

“I thought you’d be proud of me, this is a high level spell!”

“This is a dangerous spell Talia, spies could become anyone!”

“That’s not fair she would never-”

“It’s my fault highness, I pressured the princess into teaching me-”

“No! I wanted to learn how to make a playmate like that and-”

“Enough!” Izira let out an exasperated sigh and pinched her temples. “How about we make a deal. I agree to not turn the both of you in, and in return you each do something for me, got it?

“Fine.” Talia sulked.

Lowering the disguise, Praxina replied: “As you wish, highness”

“Ok” Kneeling so she was eye to eye with the two girls, Izira spoke: “Talia, from now on you have to come to every meeting, summit, and negotiation that Xeris is involved with.”

The younger princess began to protest but was quickly shot down.

“You need to learn that your actions have consequences Talia, dont throw a tanty. It will also help enforce your responsibilities as princess to see the inner workings of the Xerian government”.

“And as for you” she rounded on Praxina “I need you to swear to me that you will never use that spell outside these four walls again. Some very bad people would love to get their hands on it, and I’m sure hurting you to get it wouldn’t be a problem for them. This is for your own safety, do you understand?”

“Yes, your highness” the blue eyed girl gave a little shiver at the thought of strangers coming to the royal castle just to hurt her. Would the king’s guard protect her? She took Talia’s hand and squeezed it tight, welcoming the grounded feeling it gave her.

With a sigh Izira stood and brushed off her skirts. “Good, then this whole thing will be our little secret ok?”

As the younger girls agreed, the crown princess realized she had been gone for quite some time. Reaching for her sister’s hand she started the long walk back to their worried parents.

“Come along Talia, Mother and Father will be glad that you’re safe and sound. Say goodbye now, and maybe if you’re good we can come visit her”

As she was dragged away Talia beamed happily and waved goodbye with her free hand.

“Promise to play with me again at the next summit ok? I think we’re going to become best friends!”

“Of course princess, you can always count on me” Praxina waved back, the dog at her feet barking and wagging its tail in agreement as the two sisters disappeared through the doorway.

As the burgundy haired girl was left smiling alone in the courtyard the entire scene faded to black.

[winterisakiller]

Get Better - Chapter Nine

Title: Get Better

Chapter: 9/18

Character: Tom Hiddleston/Cath Richardson (OFC)

Genre: Romance

Rating: Teen and up

Summary: Love. Companionship. Family. These are all of the things Tom Hiddleston desperately wanted. But his life and his choices left that a distant and unlikely prospect. So he did his best to move on and live his life as is. When an opportunity to return to the theater arises, he jumps at the chance and along the way finds that maybe, just maybe, those distant and unlikely prospects are closer than he could have imagined. Sequel to Brave Face.

Authors Notes/Warnings: So as I was writing Brave Face I knew that Tom’s story wasn’t over, even if that particular part of it was. And while I knew, more or less, what the overall ending to the story would be, its taken me a while to figure out the time in between. Thanks to @redfoxwritesstuff for letting me continually throw ideas off and at you. I still can’t fathom why you put up with it, but I am eternally grateful you do. This story will update on Thursdays.

Tag list: @tinchentitri @noplacelikehome77 @theheartofpenelope @blacksuitofdoom @nonsensicalobsessions @messy-insomniac-bookgirl @wolfsmom1 @just-the-hiddles @theoneanna @hiddlescastle @echantedbytwh @alexakeyloveloki

Previous Chapter

CHAPTER NINE

 “I don’t know how or why I let you talk me into this,” Cath groaned, leaning her head back against the cool wall behind her. Every inch of her ached, how she was ever going to manage making it from the studio floor back into the changing rooms she couldn’t begin to fathom. “I’m dying.”

 Gemma tossed her head back, her short, light blonde hair flying back from her face as she let out a loud laugh which echoed throughout the now empty room. “You are not dying.” She placed a hand on her hip surveying the sight before her, shook her head, and bent to offer her hand to her deflated friend. “Besides, it’s good for you.”

 Cath reluctantly took the proffered hand and allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. She limped pathetically towards the changing room behind Gemma, not bothering to keep pace with her much taller friend. How could she be this out of shape? It was mindboggling. When Cath had gotten the call yesterday afternoon, she’d gladly taken Gemma up on her offer to attend a yoga class with her the following morning. After all, how difficult could it possibly be? Oh, she thought with a biting cynicism, to be young and naïve once more.  

 What she had assumed to be a basic yoga class (something she’d been so sure she could handle. She was reasonably in shape, after all, and not completely inflexible) had turned out to be anything but. This was evil yoga. Sweaty, difficult, insane yoga. God, Gemma must have been out of her mind to think that Cath would possibly enjoy twisting herself into positions the human body, or well her body, had absolutely no business even attempting.

 Gemma turned back as they reached the door and let out a sympathetic chuckle. “You’ll feel better after a shower, trust me.”

 Cath scoffed. “The last time I trusted you, I ended up here. You’re track record isn’t exactly speaking highly of you right now.”

 She’d known Gemma since uni; they’d ended up suitemates in their first year and hadn’t initially gotten on. Clashes happened frequently over study habits, music choices, and hundreds of other little things; leaving both at each other’s throats more often than not. Gemma had been an only child of only children; sharing a space hadn’t come easily to her and Cath, while typically an unfailingly patient person, was finding her resolve wearing alarmingly thin. It hadn’t been until halfway through the semester and the pressure of midterms that they’d bonded. It was amazing what a bit of alcohol and breaking into tears of frustration at three in the morning could do for a friendship. They’d remained close ever since despite conflicting schedules and occasional (well more than occasional, if she were being completely honest) clashes of personality. It was an odd friendship between them, but it worked more often than it did not.

 Gemma shook her head and wandered towards the showers. “My track record is flawless, not my fault you can’t keep up.”

 “Why am I friends with you again?”

 “Because you love me,” Gemma’s voice echoed from the showers.

 “And that love shrinks by the day!”

 Gemma’s resonating laughter echoed from the other room. Cath shook her head and, with a grimace, found the locker where she’d stored her change of clothing and shower supplies (something she had almost left in her flat, despite Gemma’s instance that she bring them along. It was yoga after all, nothing too strenuous. Ha, yeah right.), and gathered what she needed before making her way to the showers with a slowness bordering on comical.

 The hot water, however, felt amazing against the tenseness of her shoulders and back. As she stood beneath the torrent of water, Cath felt herself start to relax. It was with the greatest reluctance that she tore herself from the sheltering warmth of the shower fifteen minutes later. She dried and dressed with care, while the water had done wonders she didn’t want to chance anything by moving too quickly. Gemma was dressed and leaning haphazardly against the wall of the dressing area as Cath ran her towel over her hair one last time and quickly pulled it back into a bun at the top of her head; she would worry about drying and styling it once she got home.

 “So you up for joining me again next week?”

 Cath snorted loudly, covering her mouth in a futile gesture. It took several moments for her to compose herself. “Absolutely not. I barely survived this time.”

 Gemma shook her head. “It does get easier each time. And besides,” she added with a wicked gleam in her eye, “it’ll do wonders for your skills in other areas…”

 She didn’t bother to cover the loud and obnoxious laugh Gemma’s words tore from her. “Be that as it may, I’ve currently got no one with whom I am trying to impress so those ‘skills’ would be wasted on me.”

 Gemma shrugged. “Still it’s something to file away for a rainy day…”

 “As fun as that sounds, I think I’ll pass.”

 The tall blonde smiled and shook her head. “Fair enough.”

 The two said their goodbyes and Cath took off down the street towards coffee shop that had caught her eye two hours prior on her way to the yoga studio; a small brick and glass front building with a hand-painted sign hanging above the door bearing the name Uncommon Grounds in bright, clean lettering. The caffeine was practically screaming her name and, honestly, who was she to ignore its call. Bag stashed over her left shoulder, she pushed the shop door open and paused as the scent of coffee, pastry, and spices flooded over her. God, she would never tire of it.

 What was not so pleasing, however, was the queue that formed from the counter nearly towards the door of the shop. Just great. It moved quicker than she’d expected, given its length, and within ten minutes she was out the door again, double vanilla latte in one hand and a Triple Chocolate Meltdown muffin in the other. It was definitely not one of her better choices but once she’s seen it in the display case, Cath had known she was a goner. Besides, she’d reasoned with herself, after all the work she’d done that morning she’d earned the damned thing. And she was definitely going to let herself enjoy it.

 She flirted with the idea of heading directly towards the Underground station and home, she was certainly tired enough for it to be an intriguing idea, but found herself instead heading down the pavements and into the nearby park. It had warmed up enough to make the idea of enjoying her hard-earned treasures on one of the benches overlooking the heath below well worth it.

                                                            —

 Cath popped the last piece of her muffin into her mouth and sighed, leaning her back farther into the wooden slats of the bench. It wasn’t a particularly warm day, but nice enough that the heath below was dotted with people running around; parents chasing children, people walking dogs, couples walking and in hand. She took another sip of her latte and closed her eyes, letting the slight warmth of the just barely visible sun warm her face.

 That peace, however, was short-lived.

 A loud, and strangely familiar, series of barks exploded from somewhere down the main path. Cath’s eyes shot open in time to see a streak of reddish brown baring straight for her. Without thinking she leapt to her feet, a flash of panic racing through her, and nearly swallowed her heart when the blur came to an abrupt stop before her. The blur, now clearly a brown spaniel, barked once and sat panting, eyes wide and filled with mischief.

 “Bobby?” The name spilled from her lips in confusion. Surely this couldn’t be Tom’s dog. The spaniel let out a woof as if confirming he was, indeed, the dog she believed him to be. “What are you doing here? Where’s your human?”  She glanced around behind him, hoping to see Tom hurrying along the path behind the dog. There was not a soul. Damn.

 She knelt to the ground, reaching out and scratching him behind the ear. She noted with a flash of amusement that he was without his usual harness, though his collar was still intact. The spaniel leaned into her hand, his tail a blur of motion. “Oh young man, something tells me that when Tom finds you, you’ll be in quite the spot of trouble.”

 Cath pushed herself back up to her feet, scanning the area around them once again hoping to see Tom jogging up the path. No such luck. She looked down at Bobby whose attention seemed now laser focused on the tree behind her. “Oh no you don’t.” Bending down, she looped her fingers in his collar. Bobby whined but didn’t try to pull away. She held him for another minute before slowly letting go. He wriggled but didn’t take off. “Alright. Let’s see if we can find Tom, shall we?”

 Grabbing her gym bag from the bench behind her, Cath rifled through it and pulled out the laces from her trainers, tying them together in a crude but effective knot. Just because he seemed to be listening to her now didn’t mean she trusted the spaniel not to attempt bolting at the first distraction. From the stories Tom told, and from the small amount of time she’d spent in the spaniel’s company, Bobby was not one to be trusted over much. She quickly looped the end of the lace around his collar, double knotting it before wrapping the other end around her free hand. It wasn’t ideal but the last thing she wanted was for him to run off.

 They’d finished a loop around the nearby pond when a high pitched squealing caught both her and the spaniel’s attention. Cath spunk around to find a strawberry blonde little girl in a bright pink coat and blue wellies charging at them at a fair clip yelling “Bobby!” at the top of her voice. “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!”

 A few paces behind her, a harried look etched across his features, was Tom. “Allie,” he bellowed, “no!”

 The little girl paid Tom absolutely no mind as she continued to barrel at both Cath and the spaniel in question. Bobby excited by all the chaos began barking like mad and darted off in the little girl’s direction, ripping free of Cath’s grasp, shoe lace trailing behind him.

 “Shit,” Cath hissed and sprinted after him.

 Bobby and the girl collided with a mess of barks and tears. Tom reached them first, dropping to his knees and picking up the girl, quickly looking her over from head to toe to rule out injury. Seemingly satisfied that she was, in fact, alright, he rocked her gently and kissed her head. She continued to whimper and cling to him. Probably more startled by the happenings than truly hurt, Cath reasoned. “Darling, it’s alright,” Tom admonished, rocking her slowly back and forth until her crying seemed to slow.

 Cath stopped a few feet back from Tom and the little girl. Allie, she corrected herself, remembering the name he’d called. The last thing she wanted was to intrude but leaving without saying a word felt…wrong. She instead, fixed her attention on Bobby, who sat on the grass beside his master and the girl confusion painted clearly across his features. He hadn’t tried to bolt again, though, and Cath counted her lucky stars. She had absolutely no desire to play another round of chase at the moment.

 Allie appeared to be calming, her wailing had begun to die down into the occasional sniffle. Once it was clear that particular crisis was over, Tom’s attention snapped toward Bobby who began to whimper and then quickly up to Cath.

 “It seems I owe you a debt of gratitude for finding this little trouble maker.”

 Cath shrugged, “More like the escape artist found me. As soon as I realized I knew the barking terror bolting at me, I figured grabbing him and trying to find you was the most sensible option.”

 Tom laughed, sending a ripple of amusement and warmth coursing through her. “I am forever in your debt, my lady.”

 “Uncle Tommy silly,” a muffled voice echoed from his lap, turning both of their attentions to the little girl still tight in Tom’s arms.

 It was Cath’s turn to laugh. His niece. That answered several of her questions and brought to light countless more. She filed the information away to process later. “He certainly is.”

 Allie pulled herself back from her uncle’s embrace and turned her hazel eyes on Cath, interest and confusion warring for dominance across her small and reddened face. After several moments silence she declared, “You’re pretty.”

 It was such a frank and matter of fact statement that Cath blinked at her for several seconds before breaking out into a wide and toothy grin. “Thank you. You’re quite pretty yourself.”

 The girl beamed, squirming her way out of her uncle’s embrace and darting towards Cath. She wrapped her arms around Cath’s leg. “Princess?” Cath blinked again in confusion. Allie pulled back, turning towards Tom and exclaiming, “Princess! Princess!”

 Tom looked first at Cath, offering her a sheepish smile, then down at his niece. “Allie, sweetie, I don’t think…”

 Cath laughed, catching on to the girl’s train of thought. She bent down and smiled brightly at Allie. “I’m not a princess, but I do work with them sometimes in the theatre.” Allie’s eyes widened. “What about you, Allie? Are you a princess?”

 The young girl nodded enthusiastically. “I’m a princess!”

 “It’s one of her favorite games as of late,” Tom provided, smiling and rubbing at the back of his neck. Bobby barked, clearly not thrilled at being ignored. Tom sighed, his eyes darting down towards Bobby, and a slight confused frown spread across his face. He grabbed at the spaniel’s collar and fingered the attached shoe laces with amusement before returning his gaze towards Cath. He held up the end of the makeshift lead. “Creative.”

 Cath shrugged. “He darted on you once and I wasn’t taking that chance…Besides the laces were all I had.”

 Tom laughed heartily. “Can’t fault you there.”

 He bent to reattach Bobby’s harness and lead, untying the laces and handing them back to Cath, whose attention was steadfast on Allie. The little girl was talking a mile a minute, bouncing and laughing, about dressing up and going to balls like ‘Uncle Tommy’ and asking in turn which princesses Cath had worked with. “Belle?” she’d asked with wide, hopeful eyes.

 “Yes, I did actually,” Cath laughed, watching the delight and awe spread across the young girl’s face. “And she is just as charming as she seems.” She’d worked on a production of the musical in the West End a few years back and found herself smiling at the memory. It had been a draining, chaotic, but fun several months.

 The more the girl talked the more Cath found her utterly enchanting. It was clear she idolized her uncle, and honestly, Cath couldn’t blame her. She let her eyes drift over to where he was standing. The man seemed almost too good to be true, and experience taught her to be wary of him because of it. By all accounts she’d known Tom to be just as he appeared; he’d never once given an indication of being anything other than a thoroughly decent man both on and off the stage. Everyone she’d met who knew or had worked with him consistently sang his praises. But still, sometimes looks were deceiving.

 “Alright, Allie, I think we’ve taken up quite enough of her time.” Tom moved to place a hand on the girl’s back, his other still tightly gripping Bobby’s lead. Allie looked up at him, pouting and eyes once again on the brink of tears. Oh Lord.

 “Don’t wanna go,” she ground out defiantly.

 “Alice Marie…” There was a warning in Tom’s tone Cath recognized from her own mother, and any parent she’d ever encountered, while dealing with a stubborn or unruly child.

 She watched the interplay between them with a wry sense of amusement. It was clear that Allie was prepared to throw quite the fit if not granted what she wanted and it was just as clear that it was the absolute last thing that Tom wanted, though he was prepared to stand his ground regardless. He’s the makings of a fine father. The thought stole its way across her mind and she furiously brushed it aside. That was the last thing she needed to be thinking of. But still…

 As if sensing weakness Allie turned, focusing her wide, tear-filled hazel eyes on Cath. Strong. She needed to stay strong. But then the girl’s small lip began to tremble and Cath knew it was a lost cause. But still she tried. “Allie, sweetheart, your uncle said it was time for you to go.”

 “No. Wanna stay.” The tears were now slowly running down her reddened cheeks. Cath looked helplessly from Tom to Allie and back. “Wanna stay with princess.”

 She swallowed thickly, “I know you do, sweetheart, but I think your uncle has things he needs to do before he has to go to work tonight.” Cath glanced helplessly at Tom. Stubborn, temperamental actors she could handle in spades, but crying children…

 “And I’m sure Cath has things she needs to get done as well,” Tom added, smiling softly at his tearful niece. Allie only shook her head, the tears coming in earnest now. The panic in Tom’s eyes was impossible to miss.

 Cath took a deep breath and commended her soul to god. “I can stay for a little while longer, Allie sweetie, but then I do need to be getting home.”

 Allie’s face immediately brightened. She wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands and looked hopefully between Cath and her uncle. “Ice cream?” She pointed vaguely down the jogging path towards a small stand selling ice cream bars and ice lollies.

 Tom let out a soft groan. “Your mum is going to murder me.”

 “Won’t tell.” The grin Allie gave him was wide and hopeful. Cath could see Tom’s resolve crumbled just a bit further. She laughed at the sight, trying desperately to cover the action with her hand. Tom’s sharp glare told her she’d utterly failed. And that only seemed to make it harder for her to stop.

 “You’ll get one small thing. One mind. And you cannot mention this to your mum or granny.” He turned his attention briefly to Cath who was still struggling to regain her composure. She took a deep breath and did her utmost to school her features back into proper order.

 It was completely unfair what seeing Tom like this was doing to her resolve. He’s a friend. Thinking him anything more is just going to make it worse. She watched as he wrestled Allie up into his arms, still maintaining a tight grip on Bobby’s lead, and settled her across his shoulders. Allie giggled in delight and shouted “Ice cream! Ice cream!”

 Cath shook her head, laughing, as she followed the trio down the path towards the ice cream stand.  If he ever has a daughter she’s definitely going to have him wrapped round her little finger.

                                                            —

 Allie sat on the bench, happily consuming the colorful fruit flavored ice cream bar she’d chosen (after Tom had vetoed the chocolate and caramel monstrosity she’d initially wanted. Sucker or not, he knew that giving the girl that much sugar in one go would be a terrible, terrible mistake). Bobby had placed himself at her feet, head resting on his outstretched paws, his eyes ever vigilant for dropped bits. Cath found it adorable the way they interacted, it seemed Allie had all the Hiddleston men wrapped around her finger. And she’d told Tom as much when he handed her the coffee flavored ice cream bar she’d chosen (the hell with good eating choices today).

 Tom flushed and ran a hand through his hair. “She’s quite the character. There is a great deal of my sister in her that’s for certain.”

 “Is that a good or a bad thing?” Cath asked, licking the remains of her ice cream from the wooden stick before rolling it up in a napkin and stowing it in her bag to bin later.

 He let out a loud laugh, “God, it honestly depends on the situation. I love Emma dearly, but she can be a complete pain. She was the baby of the family…”

 “I know about that all too well,” Cath added with a laugh of her own.

 His eyebrows rose. “You have siblings?” She nodded. “Older or younger?”

 “A mix of both. I have an older brother and a younger sister.”

 Tom grinned. “Middle child? Welcome to the club.”

 She looked him up and down, smiling. “You’re a middle child. That explains so much."

 “You don’t exactly have room to talk, now do you?” Tom countered with a raise of his eyebrow. She stuck her tongue out at him in retaliation. “So mature.”

 Cath grinned. “I try.” She settled herself down on the bench beside Allie, who smiled brightly and attempted to grab her arm with sticky fingers. Tom was quick to swoop in with napkins.

 “Not so fast, Allie love. We mustn’t grab with sticky hands.” The girl reluctantly allowed her uncle to clean her before returning her attention back to original goal.

 She bombarded Cath with more questions about princesses and asked repeatedly if she could be made into one. Tom had told the girl that Allie worked with him (‘making people look pretty’ he’d explained to the girl’s wide eyed amazement as they’d walked to get their ice creams). “You would have to ask your mummy sweetheart,” Cath had answered as diplomatically as she could. She watched as Allie worked through the idea, her small face scrunched in thought.

 After several moments her face cleared and she once again smiled brightly. “Okay!”

 Beside her, Tom chuckled. “And you said she had me wrapped around her finger.”

 “Watch it, Hiddleston.”

 “Whatever you say, darling,” he countered, still smiling. “Whatever you say.”

 Cath shook her head and turned to face Allie. “What are we going to do with your uncle?”

 Allie laughed, “Uncle Tommy silly.” She pointed at Tom. “Silly!”

 Bobby barked twice, wagging his tail. And they all dissolved into laughter.

 “He certainly has his moments,” Cath agreed once she’d calmed enough to speak. “He is a very silly man.”

 Tom shrugged. “Makes my line of work infinitely easier.”

 “And mine that much harder,” Cath added, amusement coloring her tone. As much as she liked the man, Tom could be a complete pain when in her chair; like sitting still and not fucking blinking or squirming where things that happened to other people. She shook her head. It was a damned good thing he was so likeable or she just might hate him.  

 She raised her eyes to Tom’s face and watched as a frown slowly spread across his features as his eyes swept over the overly complicated watch on his wrist (why he insisted on wearing something that ridiculously complex as a means to tell time she’d never understand). Cath could clearly hear the curse words he’d been dying to utter but would not as he knew the little ears in his presence would not only hear them but repeat them loudly and most likely at the worst possible moment.

 He grimaced instead and let out a huff of annoyance. “Allie darling, we best be off. Your mum will be back soon.”

 Allie’s face crumpled as she looked between her uncle and Cath. It was clear she didn’t want to leave but at the same time, she very much wanted to see her mother. Cath leaned over and nudged the girl lightly with her shoulder. “It’s alright. I have to go home too. But it was wonderful meeting you Allie. I hope I get to see you again soon.”

 “Promise?”

 Cath nodded, “I will do my best.” Allie beamed and launched herself into Cath’s lap, enveloping her in a fierce hug. Beside her she could hear Tom laughing and Bobby’s quiet woofs signaling his apparent desire to go. The little girl pulled back and climbed off the bench, grabbing her uncle’s hand. Bobby immediately jumped up, resting his front paws onto Cath’s lap, barked once, and licked her hands. “Such a ham,” she laughed, cutting her eyes up to a bemused Tom. “Just like your human.”

 Tom simply laughed and shook his head. He pulled gently on the lead and Bobby, with great reluctance, let himself be lead down the path beside Tom and Allie and out of sight. Cath smiled as she watched them go.

Next Chapter

[ckret2]

Prompt, eh? Hmm, perhaps try a monologue from a character's perspective as they come to the horrible realization that are falling deeper and deeper in love. Bonus points if it starts over something as simple as thinking the individual has a cute sneeze.

So my first thought was “oh Ghidorah” but then I was like “but I’ve basically already done that with Ghidorah in the form of arguing with themselves about Rodan, what other character that we both know could I do that with” and then I was like “oh Gigan?”

And then I was like “well obviously he’s gotta have somebody to be monologuing to” and then it uh turned into a whole fic with a plot arc and a cliffhanger instead of a simple monologue, and also took me like seven hours to write instead of thirty minutes.

I haven’t proofed it because it’s 5 a.m.! Enjoy!!!

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The Fissures Between Flesh and Metal

###

“The first time I saw them,” Gigan said, turned to take in both the bartender and the robot on the stool next to him, “they’d just stolen a million credit job out from under me.”

The bartender rapped the sharp tip of one tentacle against the bar disapprovingly, and the robot let out a low whistle.

“Yeah,” Gigan said. “I was ready to kill them on the spot. The apocalyptic mercenary market’s already crowded enough—there’s practically more people running around who can destroy planets than there are people who actually want a planet destroyed, you know? I’ll put up with professional rivalry, fine, but I’m not gonna take this from some edgy new guys in town who don’t have enough respect for their fellow professionals not to horn in on someone else’s job. Gimme another hit?”

The robot obligingly picked up the battery that it and Gigan had been sharing and quickly pressed the terminals to the side of Gigan’s metal beak. Electricity jolted straight into his brain. He tipped his head back, letting the rush wash through his circuits, his thoughts popping and static flashing in his optical band.

As the power boost sizzled out and he came back down, for a moment he saw a blurry golden shape with three heads and enormous wings. Then his vision cleared and it was gone.

Gigan shook his head. “But as I’m standing in a freshly-leveled village on this planet that shoulda been my job, watching these jerks who undercut me walk strut around and trying to decide the best angle to attack them from, one of them bends over and licks up this smear made out of one of the locals. The other two screw up their faces in disgust, the one that licked it is scraping his tongue off on a rock, the middle one’s biting his horn in revenge—and then the head on the other side takes a taste too, and they do it all over again.” He threw back his head, squawking in laughter. The bartender rattled a couple of tentacles in amusement. The robot just shook its head.

“Anyway,” Gigan went on, “I figured then either they were too damn stupid to realize they’d stolen someone’s job—heck, maybe they were just wild animals that had been dropped off to make a mess—or, they were the most fun guys I’d ever seen. So I let ‘em live.”

“Did you talk to them?” the robot asked. It wasn’t looking at Gigan anymore; its optic was off. A dozen different open tabs in glowing squares and rectangles floated in front of the bot, projected from the computer plugged into its wrist. The robot groped around blindly for the battery and took another hit; the floating screens sizzled and wavered.

Gigan waited for the static to die down before he replied. “Nah, not then. Had no idea what language to start with. I figured if they really were mercs and not someone’s pet planet squashers, I’d eventually run into them again somewhere like this.”

“This” being the bar around them: an illicit pop-up stop clinging precariously to the surface of an asteroid under a makeshift canopy tent, with a smattering of round tables and stools screwed directly into the asteroid’s surface and a bar made out of a row of coolers. Places like this were a dime a dozen in this arm of the galaxy, appearing in a matter of hours and disappearing just as fast, lasting anywhere from a week to five years. All you needed to make one was a force field to keep out nearby asteroids and to keep in enough air to prevent customers’ heads from popping—but providing gravity and breathable air was the customers’ responsibility. The bartender wore goggles and an air filter that snaked around her head to an air tank strapped between three larger tentacles; Gigan had enough internal air storage and a good enough filter in his throat that he’d be fine for hours as long as he didn’t get in a fight. He kept his tail and one leg curled beneath his seat to keep himself from floating off it.

Bars like this were the best place to find odd jobs and the odd guys to do them: hired killers, hackers, thugs, dealers in contraband of all kind. Gigan couldn’t count how many bars like this he and the triple threat had hung out in—either because they’d run into each other there between jobs, or because they’d come together.

“We crossed paths a lotta times over the next, uh…” he waved a scythe vaguely, “dunno. Few centuries, I guess? It’s hard to keep track of standard galactic time when you spend all your time bouncing between different planets with different year lengths. Sometimes we got hired by two different employers to hit the same world—I usually, y'know, got hired as muscle to extort a ransom, but the only jobs they ever did were full mass extinctions. I got to see them in action—wow. They’re a moving force of nature. On the right planets—wet ones, mainly—they create storms hundreds of miles across just by flying.” To the bartender, he said, “You’re from an aquatic world, right? You look like it.”

Rapping on the makeshift bar top with the tips of half a dozen tentacles, the bartender said, “My ancestral world? Mostly aquatic. About four fifths of the planet, I’m told.”

“Yeah, they’d tear your planet to shreds.“  He didn’t have enough appendages to speak the bartender’s percussive language properly—like the robot, he was speaking it by synthesizing the right raps and taps through his speaker—but he added a scrape with one scythe on the bar top to underscore the sentiment.

She shrugged.

"Fought them a few times, too,” Gigan said. “They’re vicious in close combat. It's kill or be killed, no in between. I’d usually have to cut and run, heh, just take the financial hit, cuz there’s no beating them without getting damaged so bad the victory isn’t worth it. They’re probably the best warriors I’ve ever met, but the worst mercenaries to share a market with.”

He thought his tone was admiring, but the robot said, “I thought you got along with each other?”

“We did,” Gigan insisted, and immediately corrected himself, “We do. It just took a while to get properly introduced to each other, you know? Every time I met them, they were in the middle of a job—and they had that whole... intense, mysterious, aloof loner schtick going on. For the longest time, I didn’t even know whether they could talk.” He hooked one of his wrist spurs through the handle of his drink, took a sip through the straw—hated straws, but a lid with a straw was the cheapest way to keep a drink from floating out of a mug and bars like this were nothing if not cheap—and grimaced. Either his drink had gone off in the past five minutes or that battery was messing with his taste buds. Probably the latter. "When we finally met each other properly, it was in—you know that cruddy little strip of solar systems that ended up under no one’s jurisdiction after the 'Rog turf war? Buncha little lawless hellholes?“

The bartender said, "My ancestral home world was in that strip.”

“Sucks,” Gigan said. “Hope it wasn’t one of the ones the 'Rogs asked me to clear out. Anyway, I crossed paths with them in one of the space port cities near the edge of the contested territory. They’d gotten in a bar fight. And lost.”

They’d been thrown across the bar onto their back, legs kicking uselessly in the air, hissing and spitting in the worst Suneri that Gigan had ever heard. Someone had been mad at them because they’d finished the job they’d been hired for even after they'd been told the world had paid the ransom their employer had demanded; they were mad that they’d been ordered to stop when they’d said from the start that wasn’t how they worked. They were twice the height of anyone else in the bar besides Gigan; but they were fighting completely naked—weaponless and defenseless—and consequently got their tails handed to them.

He’d learned a little bit more about them by then. Over past few centuries, he’d asked around about a three-headed, golden, scaled, winged warrior that spat lightning. He'd eventually stumbled on some sparse info about the prize weapons of a conquering empire in some far-flung corner of the galaxy, a race rather like the local Garogas. Their three-headed warriors were some sort of genetically engineered killing machines.

So was Gigan.

The warriors he’d seen were very, very far from their home.

So was Gigan.

Over time, he'd found enough info on the empire to download its dominant species’ language, so when he’d crossed paths with the warriors again and confirmed that they could, in fact, speak—

“I offered to buy them drinks.” In their home world’s language. “And they kicked me in the chest.” He laughed.

It was his fault. He should’ve known that anyone who’d flown that far to get away from their masters wouldn’t wanna hear a stranger speaking their masters’ language. Would Gigan have?

“And this is when you started making friends?” the bartender asked dubiously.

“Sure! It was the first time they didn’t try to kill me,” Gigan said. “And they did let me buy them that drink. They were flat broke. Get this—this is why I kept running into them everywhere—they were snapping up half the jobs on the market because they were doing them for free.”

The robot made a painful-sounding buzz low in its abdomen that Gigan took for a laugh.

“Yeah! Yeah. Remember what I said about that edgy loner schtick of theirs?” He drummed emphatically on the bar top. “They just wanted to watch worlds burn. No money. No rewards. They didn’t turn down anyone stupid enough to hire them, but they don’t take any orders, either. Get what you pay for, huh?”

“What is their name?” the robot asked.

Gigan’s good cheer immediately disappeared. “They don’t have one,” he said sharply.

“Of course they do.”

“No, they said they don’t. They weren’t given one. They wanna be nameless, I’ll respect that.”

“I am in the Xiliens’ military personnel database.”

Gigan leaned over, trying to see the screens from the robot’s angle. “Yeah? You’ve got a connection to their empire from here?”

“A really slow one,” the robot shot back, “patched into the network via a Xilien spy two star systems away who is connected to the home world with the worst ansible I have ever had the displeasure of interfacing with, so I would like to spend as little time doing unnecessary searches as possible. It looks like they have got hundreds of files on three-headed monsters like your buddies. Once I have cracked the security encryption on them, I do not want to open them one by one.”

For a moment, Gigan was silent. Then he said, “They said their home world didn’t name them—it numbered them.”

“Sympathies,” the robot said. “I have still got a bar code on my ass with my factory serial number. Do you know theirs?”

“He said they’re Zero.” He felt like a traitor. They'd only trusted him with that information because they'd believed him when he swore that he'd never call them by their homeworld's label—and certainly that he'd never tell anyone else.

The robot froze momentarily, processing that. “Easy to remember.” One of the screens changed as the robot started searching.

“Just one 'he’ now?” the bartender asked. “You were talking about all three together earlier.”

“Yeah, uh, he as in—as in the one on the left,” Gigan said. He didn't think of the information as coming from them, but from him—the one who'd persuaded the other two to share it, the one who'd leaned in to whisper it to him in the dark while the other two watched for eavesdroppers. “You’ve got lefty, righty, and front-and-center. Totally different people. Lefty’s… probably my favorite. I like them all about the same, but he—makes himself easiest to like, you know? Great sense of humor—the murderous kind—the kind of guy that can find anything entertaining. From explosions to head wounds. That’s rare.”

Although sometimes Gigan had gotten the impression that, on some level, lefty was forcing himself to feel entertained. The more Gigan got to know him, to see under the aloof façade they all put on, the more he got the sense that lefty had this... desperate fragility about him, like he was crumbling apart and looking for something to latch onto—a weird taste or a unique view or a good fight—something to hold him together.

All three of them gave off that impression, truth be told, just in different ways. Righty looked for stability in his other two heads, ever turned inward, to the point he was all but oblivious to life outside of them. Front-and-center held himself together through sheer force of will, and held back anything from getting close enough to touch him and break him apart.

They were all three so very brittle. They had fissures deep in their body and minds, fissures traced along the paths of the invisible scars where they’d been stitched together into a three-headed monster. And whenever Gigan glimpsed that brittleness—whenever they withdrew into themselves at a question about their past, whenever they tried to pretend they weren’t nervous around employers who paraded about mind-controlled thralls, whenever they hesitated in front of a door that said “No Pets” like they didn’t think they qualified as people instead of animals—he felt the fissures between his flesh and his metal, too.

He didn’t like to talk about his fissures. But they liked to talk about theirs even less, so it all worked out neatly—except that, sometimes, he wished he could talk to them about how he kept his from cracking open, in hopes that it could help them too. He hated their brittleness. He hated how it hurt them.

“But they’re all fun,” he said. “Fighting them especially, once you get them to a place where they’re trying to beat you instead of kill you. They don’t mind losing a few body parts, even—they just regrow them. I even saw them regrow front-and-center’s whole head, once. I didn’t take him off, just saw it happen. Fighting alongside them, though—sometimes we'd get hired for jobs together—watching the way they can work a hurricane, wow…” To think that they didn’t think they were people. Had they never heard themselves sing before? Had they never seen the way they danced through clouds and lightning? Had they never noticed how they effortlessly conducted both rain and minds alike like they were symphonies? Didn’t they know that they were maestros in the sky? Their sheer visionary genius, their unsurpassed grace, the beauty of golden scales gyrating through the cloudless eye of a storm…

“Hit me again,” he asked the robot, and he wasn’t sure whether it was in hopes of pushing the images out of his RAM or in hopes of summoning up another hallucinatory vision of them. The robot flicked on its optic long enough to pick up the battery and lean over.

When Gigan came back down, the robot said, “I am not finding any monsters named Zero. Have you got another name?”

“No—what do you mean 'named’? They don’t have names besides numbers, do they?”

“They do. The Xiliens gave them all code names. They are things like 'Death’ and 'Hyper’ and 'Kaiser.’”

Gigan shouldn’t have been surprised that they’d lied about their name, after everything else. But he was. And it hurt. “Well—keep looking. You’ve got the picture I sent you, right?”

“I will have to look through every file individually to find a visual match.”

“I’m paying you for your time, aren’t I? Come on.”

The robot made an irritated buzzing noise, but snapped, “Fine.”

“Why do you have to track them down anyway?” the bartender asked. “If you’re so close.”

Gigan shrugged. “They went and disappeared on me ages ago. I’m just trying to figure out where they went. I figured their home world might be looking for their lost planet-flatteners, so…” Although they’d never said so, he’d always got the sense that they were terrified of their home world—and terrified that they were being followed. Not the vague paranoia that any escaped weapon felt, but like they knew.

“So why’d they take off? You have a fight?”

“No. We didn’t. In fact, the last time we spoke was—was the opposite of a fight.”

The last time they spoke, Gigan had asked them to come with him. For good. He thought they should market themselves as a package apocalyptic deal, let Gigan handle finessing the employers and victims while the triple threat handled the razing. Give the three of them the opportunity to experience the cushy things you can only get when you’re getting paid for your jobs—fine dining, luxury hotels, resort planets—because they deserved those things all the time, not just when they happened to cross paths with Gigan between jobs. Take them to symphonies and operas—he heard them singing, constantly, any time things were still and they thought no one was listening, in languages he’d never learned. Travel the galaxy together. Get as far away from their pasts as they could.

They said they’d think about it.

He’d never seen them again.

He snatched up his drink and irritably stirred the straw, trying to suck up the last drops floating around inside. He slammed the mug back down. "Just trying to see if they tripped and fell in a black hole or something,“ he muttered. "Get me another. Less blood this time, it tastes funky.” The bartender took back the empty mug and opened one of the coolers.

The robot turned on its optic. “I think we have a match,” it said. Gigan immediately leaned over, squinting at the screens. Something in him sparked and simmered when he saw the photo. That was them—far younger, with a near-feral bloodthirst in their eyes that he’d only ever seen when they were fighting for their lives.

“The Xiliens have a database of AWOL monsters where they document their efforts to track them down. It was a lot faster to go through than all the files,” the robot said. “You were right—they are numbered, and they were assigned zero. I believe your friends were the prototype for the others.” It pointed at small text at the top of their file, Monster #0, and then dragged its finger down to the far larger text underneath: KING. “That is their name.”

Gigan wondered why they would rather claim they’d been named “Zero” than “King.” They deserved to be called King. “Well? What’s it say? Do they know where they are?”

The robot pulled up a map of the galaxy. It showed a cone stretching away from their general neighborhood—like the maps that came from trying to predict the path of a hurricane crossing an ocean. It curved counterclockwise in an arc, a little more than half the galaxy’s radius out from the supermassive black hole. The path was thousands of lightyears long and, at its widest point, hundreds across.

“They found faint psychic traces of King’s interstellar path almost a hundred thousand years ago heading roughly along that arc, assuming they continued on the same trajectory,” the robot said. “But that is the most recent data the Xiliens have.”

“It’ll do,” Gigan said. At least it was a starting point. Even if they’d long moved on, Gigan might be able to pick up the trail again if he knew where they’d been. “What are these 'psychic traces’ the Xiliens are tracking? Any way I can track that too?”

“I can look it up, but it will cost you more.”

“Yeah yeah yeah. That’s fine.”

“Hold on,” the bartender said, setting down Gigan’s new drink. “A hundred thousand years ago? You’re looking for someone who disappeared a hundred thousand years ago?”

Gigan winced. “Technically, no. It was—longer than that, actually.”

“How long ago?”

Gigan opened his mouth. And stuck the straw in it so he wouldn’t have to answer.

The bartender tapped out disapproval on the bar top. “They could be anywhere in the galaxy by now.”

“Yeah, if they had any idea how to hitch rides,” Gigan said. “They fly everywhere. With their own wings. They spend long flights inside these things.” He stamped a hooked foot on the asteroid. “And I don’t mean a ship disguised to look like an asteroid, they travel in rocks!”

“This is gross,” the robot said. “Organic brains are gross. But here. I got the unique psychic frequency that the Xiliens are using to track King and blueprints to a machine to do it with. I do not know if they are good blueprints. I refuse to think about brains any more than that.”

“It’ll do. Beam it over.”

The robot mentally transferred over its exorbitant invoice. The instant Gigan transferred payment, it followed up with the files. “Pleasure,” it said, unplugging from its computer and beginning to pack up. It pointed at the battery. “Do you want more?”

“Keep the rest. Consider it a tip.”

“Nice.” It carefully wrapped the battery in a napkin and stowed it with the computer.

Gigan sucked down the rest of his drink, pulled some physical cash out of a compartment in his calf, and slapped it down on the bar.

The bartender put a tentacle over the money and carefully slid it to the edge of the bar so it wouldn't float away. Several taps dragging out into wry scrapes, she said, "Must be a more impressive lay than they look like.“

If Gigan hadn’t already finished his drink, he would have choked. "We never—! I mean—we're—colleagues. Colleague-friend-…mercenaries.” He shifted the leg he had anchored around the bar stool uncomfortably. “Does it... seem like something else?”

Several tentacles rippled in a shrug. “I don’t know anything about your species,” she said. “But in most, no one spends that kind of money, obsesses that amount of time, and crosses that amount of space unless it's for an offspring, a hive mind hub, a nearly-extinct food source, or a mate of some kind.”

Gigan turned that over. In his head, he called up the photo in the file that the robot had sent him. They were so young, so furious, so bestial—so much more broken than they had been even when Gigan knew them. It was a damn pity that the Xiliens kept visual instead of audial files. He wondered if they had sang back then, too.

“Honestly?” he said. “I don’t know much about my species, either.”

His flesh felt icy and his metal felt numb during the few seconds after exiting the bar’s force field as he crossed the asteroid to where he’d parked his junk heap of a ship. He was warm again by the time he’d powered it up and gotten off the rock. He turned toward the nearest proper spaceport that accommodated people of his size and profession. He had a very long search ahead of him, and he had no idea when he was next going to cross paths with a proper spacefaring planet. He had to stock up on supplies.

He needed to buy a ship that wasn’t falling apart, too. Something built for deep space exploration.

Careful not to cut it, he peeled the one picture he had of the triple threat off of his windshield and stowed it in his calf compartment, to transfer to his new ship later.

###

If you wanna read my other KOTM fics, link’s in the source below. It’s mostly Rodorah, but this fic is canon to that verse.

[fountainpenguin]

Do you have any more information on the "Aspen incident" that's been mentioned in a few of your pixie fics? I'm kinda curious to find out what exactly happened but when I search the name Aspen on your blog nothing comes up

Ooh, Aspen’s fun. I worked it out and you technically have all the information you need to answer that question, but it’s all scattered across different pieces because you’re not supposed to know yet. We don’t get to Aspen’s plot for a long time.

I will not give the answer directly, but I will help you out by collecting some hints in this post. Aspen is someone who was associated with some pixies in an ambiguous pre-series time period. He is not alive yet in Origin or Knots, but we will see him towards the end (in both stories). Here are some things Sanderson mentioned about him in Prompt 14, “Minion”- 

1)

“I haven’t been forced from a gyne since the incident with Aspen.”

2)

“Our arrangement would only be temporary. But then again, so is my arrangement with the Head Pixie.”

As I stripped away my shirt, I tried to remember who had planted such treacherous thoughts in my head. Were they all mine, or were they what was left of Aspen’s influence, acting up now that I was here in the Pink Castle again, the very place where I had come to know him so well? It seemed like Aspen would have been in understandable favor of Longwood over any other figure…

Here is what Longwood had to say about him in Pink and Gray:

1)

“Dear dust,” he says, “I’m obsessed.”

“With yourself?”

“With children.”

Rosencrantz doesn’t know how to respond to this. Rosencrantz is pretty sure Longwood has confessed to something illegal.

“Not like that,” Longwood clarifies, always one step ahead of the younger pixie and gleaning his thoughts. With a thought and a twitch of the ballpoint pen he uses as a wand, he pings a small picture into his free hand. The frame is dented, the glass shattered long ago. It’s not even a real photograph–only a crayon drawing. A child’s crayon drawing. Longwood hunkers into the chair anyway, caressing the picture with his eyes while holding the shaking chocolate mug to his mouth. He says, “I’m obsessed with that–that shadowman you used to call a mentor.”

“Sanderson?” Rosencrantz presses him cautiously. […]

“I saved his life, Rosebud. You wouldn’t remember. It was long ago. Centuries before you were born, I traded the one I held most dear to save that snotlick’s life, and I pine after him even now. You didn’t know Aspen. But I did. I had the chance. I could have chosen to save what I wanted most. What does that make me feel?”

2)

At this, Longwood bends his head, his wings jolting every few beats. He sinks a little closer to the sidewalk. “H.P., I–You owe me for Aspen.”

“I owe you for what you chose to do to Aspen?”

Longwood looks away. It’s an insult. He shouldn’t have asked.

“Sir, it wasn’t a choice. I had to. It was his fate. If I'd–If I’d tried to protect Aspen, Sanderson would have died. And…”

This pause is tenser.

“And that’s your fault. Isn’t it, sir?”

[…]

Longwood’s fists grow tighter, not looser. He does not raise his head. “I let go of Aspen for you, H.P.”

“Pretend that Sanderson is Aspen, and start enjoying his company,” the Head Pixie says. Stepping off the sidewalk, he circles Longwood and continues on his way.

“Sir,” he says, whisking after his boss, “please.”

“What’s the issue? Sanderson and Aspen have a lot in common. They both enjoy cheese and crackers. They both play with their food.”

Now it’s insulting. “Sir–”

“They favor gingertie wands. They do enjoy their music.”

“Please–”

“And this one’s a gimme, but you know how fond they both are of water.”

“Stop it!”

Longwood isn’t aware that his own ipewood wand is out of its sheath until it’s pointed at the back of his boss’s head. H.P. slows. He turns, the metal star on the dangling tail of his hat ringing out in the silent night like a bell on a bobtail. He’s amused, not upset. When his eyes glint, they seem to cast a sheen across his glasses as a whole. Longwood suddenly realizes his mistake, and jerks his hand down.

“Sir, I–I didn’t mean to–” He grabs for his face and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Ní larki… Please don’t make jokes about water at Aspen’s expense, sir. He gets night terrors. Calming him down is embarrassing. And if Sanderson ever knew Aspen was still…”

3)

“I liked your singing,” Betty told him. “You sing very well.”

Longwood glanced over at her, pulling Kenny’s blankets up to his shoulder. “Thank you for your response. I wasn’t sure I would. It’s been centuries since I’ve sung to a child.” He picked a large plush shark up from the nightstand and tucked it under Kenny’s arm. Kenny snuggled up to it and instantly went right back to sleep.

“Do you have kids?” She hoped he’d say yes. She hadn’t seen any pixie kids yet. True, Sanderson said she and Gary couldn’t live in Pixie World forever or else they’d run out of air to breathe, but Betty hoped they’d visit enough that she could make friends with some pixie kids. Did her Earth friends think she was dead? H.P. had made it sound like they did, or would soon enough. She couldn’t go back to Kansas. No more friends. No more family. No more horses. No more softball. No more school. Betty was trying not to think about that.

“I… had a kid, yes,” Longwood said. “He’s gone.”

“Where does he live now?”

Longwood looked at her more seriously. “I mean, he’s gone. He isn’t ever coming back.”

“Oh. That kind of gone.” Betty looked again at the shark he’d given Kenny. “So is that a dead person’s toy?”

“Aspen’s not dead,” Longwood snapped, and Betty jumped at the shoulders. He inhaled through his teeth. “My apologies for startling you, but I always have to express my disagreement when people state that. Aspen isn’t entirely dead. He’s still in there. I can recognize tells of it sometimes. He’s just… not as alive as he could be.” He scratched his wrist, long nails scraping his skin. “I’m sorry. Aspen was my baby. I know it was highly unprofessional of me, but I grew attached to him.”

Kenny stirred in the bed, but didn’t get up. “I’d be so sad if anything happened to Kenny,” Betty murmured. “I’m sorry. Did someone kidnap Aspen? Or did he run away?”

“No. No, he didn’t run!” Longwood’s throat briefly strangled his voice. “He was so trusting. Sanderson cornered him, and he didn’t even–think–when I saw–No.” He shook his head. “No. You would need a full lesson in Fairykind anatomy to understand exactly what happened, Ms. Betty. It’s black magic stuff. I’m sorry. Anything involving Aspen is very difficult for me to discuss, and I would prefer not to breach the subject with a child I just met, you realize.”

(Note - Black magic is performed by doctors. It’s surgery magic.)

That’s all you “officially” know right now, but you’re about to get some really juicy stuff in Origin.

Solve For Aspen

More hints about Aspen’s identity and what’s coming in Origin of the Pixies:

- Technically you’ve already met “Aspen,” but he does not use this name in public. You’ve seen him in a lot of Prompts and some other stories, but not yet in Origin or Knots.

- The life-giving organ in Fae is called the core. It is left behind when a Fae dies (Think about Anti-Cosmo finding Fairy cores on the road in “Tangled Threads”). A firstborn’s core is different from the core of a second-born (It has extra layers of magic around it). Pixies are infected with the bacteria Wolbachia pipientis, meaning they are genetically identical; Sanderson, being H.P.’s firstborn, has a firstborn core.

- Cores take on shapes specific to the individual (For instance, H.P.’s is a laser cannon, Wanda’s is a radar, and Sanderson’s is a pencil sharpener).

- Longwood was born in the Year of Leaves on the Fae zodiac. Aspen was not. So why is Aspen named after a tree?

- Think about what Finley has around his neck. We see him wearing it as an adult in “All I Ever Wanted” but not as a kid in “Evolution Hopeful” or “This Is a Box.” What could it be and why would he start wearing this thing at that age? Why Finley? What’s different about his life compared to all the other pixies?

- Sanderson and Longwood got in an argument during the “Grooming” Prompt. What exact words does Sanderson use in this scene? Why do they affect Longwood so strongly and why does Sanderson feel guilty?

- Where was Sanderson in “Minion” when he started thinking about Aspen? What unique qualities do we know this location has?

- Think about some settings we’ve visited in Origin of the Pixies that explicitly have special qualities. I foreshadowed a location in Chapter 3 (“Love Struck Out”). It comes up again later. Why did H.P. go out of his way to visit in that later chapter and what did he want to do? Why did I think it was important enough to foreshadow?

HINT: It’s near the beginning because it’s also near the end

- Try to remember if there’s a Prompt that struck you as really, really odd… Something that described special location qualities.

- In that Prompt, there were four people who could sense something. One of them showed up late and did not volunteer the same information as the other three. Who was it and what can we not confirm because they stayed silent? What could be happening off-screen during that odd Prompt?

- Sanderson flinched when the Fairy Elder went to touch him in “Minion.” Look at that encounter and focus on what he’s saying. What does he look at and what do you know about that thing?

HINT: Cross-reference with what Anti-Cosmo says about the Fairy Elder in the Frayed Knots chapter “If She Hollers.” Take his words literally.

- Knowing what you know about Pixies and the Fairy Elder, what would you guess triggered the plot in the “really, really odd” Prompt mentioned above?

HINT: Sanderson uses a certain phrase in “Grooming” that also appears in the odd Prompt. What does he describe with that phrase?

- Just before H.P. and Sanderson meet the Fairy Elder in “Minion,” H.P. names a specific location. What is this location and why would I want you, the reader, to know that it’s there?

HINT: Who can get to it?

HINT 2: Don’t overthink it. What is this place literally called?

HINT 3: In several ‘fics, we see special magic keys. Where do you think such keys go and what is the significance of having keys made of different materials?

HINT 4: Why do Fairies not have “perfect memories?” Why do Anti-Fairies supposedly have perfect memories? Why would Fairies not want Anti-Fairies to know about and use these keys?

HINT 5: We will see keys in the 130 Prompt “Repeat.” What material are these keys and where do they come from?

- We now have a person, two places, and some items (and technically a time). How might this information change the way you read Origin?

- Longwood says only one thing in the Origin chapter “Snowflake.” What does he say? Why was Longwood mentioned in the previous chapter (“How to Yoo-Doo”)? Why do these details conflict? What conclusions can be drawn?

- In Origin’s Act 2 finale, “Fruitful Fruition,” H.P. and Sanderson have a conversation where H.P. makes verbatim reference to a quote in a Season 4 episode. What is the context of his talk with Sanderson? What can I do in a backstory ‘fic that sets us up for that episode?

HINT: It’s not a Pixie episode

HINT 2: The quote is VERY specific to that episode and the episode specifically draws attention to it

HINT 3: There is a detail about Sanderson that is easy to forget, so I brought it up earlier in this post. I specifically designed this part of Sanderson in reference to that episode

HINT 4: What was the context of the original quote in the episode? Above all else, the full quote and the context behind it is what Origin of the Pixies is about.

- Four books were recently stolen from the Pink Castle library. Judging by their titles, what information would you guess is in them? (The titles were named in “The Facts of Life” and “What Karma Is”)

- Why could no one solve the crime?

- Take your new information and read “Grooming” again. What does Longwood do at night? Does this remind you of another thing that happens at night? 

HINT: Something referenced in this post

If you can answer all of the above, you should know who took the books, why they took them, what Longwood’s relationship to Aspen is, why Aspen is gone, and why Longwood believes Aspen is alive. Review the quoted text in the first half of this post and maybe you’ll realize why Longwood’s relationship with Sanderson is so complex.

That’s Aspen.

You can send asks here on Tumblr or PM me on FFN/AO3 if you want to share your thoughts, which I’m happy to talk to you about… or you can quietly watch it unfold. Up to you!