i hope he trips into a woodchipper and gets cut into itty bitty little confetti-shaped pieces.

Mamma Mia, here I go again

Title: Official Dress Code

Pairing: Loki/Mobius/Reader

Rating: Explicit

Word count: 4,7k

Summary: In which there is crossdressing, butt plugs, semi-public sex, consensual voyeurisms, and it’s all pretty graphic. So you know, a normal Thursday afternoon around here.

A/N: Once again we have two versions, chapter 1 is she/her for the reader, Chapter 2 is they/them. And as always, there’s not a single “Y/N” in sight.

AO3 Link, if you prefer

“I checked the official dress code,” Loki says, smirking as he shifts his weight from both legs to just the left, his hips accentuated by the change in angle. “Skirts are permitted in the office, as long as they reach your knees.”

“You know this isn’t what they meant,” you grumble, but you know he’s right. Those are the official guidelines.

“I’ve read my file,” Loki continues. “My gender is listed as ‘fluid’, and as such, it would be very improper for the TVA to deny me the right to express my gender identity while I work here.”

You sigh very loudly. “You’re taking advantage.”

Loki walks towards Mobius’ unmade bed, where you’re currently seated, hips swaying with each step. “Are you surprised?”

“Not really,” you confess. Your eyes are entirely focused on his legs. Their length is accentuated by the plain brown pencil skirt and work-appropriately-modest heels he is wearing. He shaved them at some point, and they look simultaneously slender and strong, the heels making his calf muscles appear even more defined than they would look in flat shoes. The rest of his usual work uniform has been left untouched, but the Time Keepers be damned, that skirt makes all the difference. “But this is pushing it.”

“A lot?”

“A... moderate amount.”

Loki grins. “Good.” Something changes in his demeanor, barely noticeable, but you (and you’re loath to admit it) know him by now. “Do you think he’ll like it?” he asks. There’s a miniscule trace of uncertainty there, an unwitting wish for approval.

Acknowledging this vulnerability with genuine affection or encouragement isn’t something he’ll accept from you though. From Mobius, sure, but you and Loki don’t have that kind of relationship. So instead you give him a lopsided smile, making a show of running your eyes up and down his body. “He has eyes, doesn’t he?” you ask, adding “Yes, I think he will.”

Loki smiles demurely and takes the last few steps that bring him within touching distance. You spread your legs, allowing him to stand between your knees. “And what about you?”

You tilt your head and pretend to consider it, although you’re sure you look plenty appreciative. “You’re not an unpleasant sight,” you finally say.

Loki snorts, reaches for his skirt and hikes it up just far enough to let him crawl into your lap. As he straddles you, you automatically bring your hands up to grab his hips and pull him closer. The fabric of the skirt feels a lot more high-quality than the standard TVA uniforms. You wonder where he got it.

You crane your neck back to make eye contact and it’s only now that you fully appreciate the look of contentment on his face. He isn’t just doing this to push TVA boundaries or turn you on, he genuinely feels good in this outfit.

Loki wraps his arms loosely around your neck. “You know,” he says, “if I had my magic, I could complete the look better.”

“Oh, really?” you ask with mock innocence, moving your hand to slide it up his thigh, under the skirt.

Loki lets out a shuddering breath. “You mean to tell me you wouldn’t like the chance to play with a cunt for once?”

You swallow, trying to keep your voice steady. “I wouldn’t be averse to the idea. However, this is all theoretical: you don’t have your magic here, and I doubt we can get a sign off on a mission with the argument that we’d like to fuck you silly while you have your shapeshifting powers at your disposal.”

“I’m sure Mobius could come up with some plausible excuse for us to take a – ah” he breaks off into a gasp, hips twitching forward as you fondle him. He’s wearing some silky underthings the definitely aren’t TVA issued. “A little excursion,” he finishes.

“Your faith in him is admirable, you know that?”

Loki’s eyes are fluttering shut, brows knitting together in concentration as you rub the heel of your palm slowly back and forth along his hardening cock. His hips start moving in time with your hand, his breathing getting more labored by the second. You lean up and press a kiss to his jaw, then trail a series of them down the column of his throat, which he gracefully bares for you. He seems to have lost track of the conversation, and that’s pretty much the greatest compliment you can get when it comes to him.

Still, one of you has to keep their wits about them.

You slow the movement of your hand. “So what’s your plan exactly?”

Loki exhales through his nose, a frustrated huff. He sits back far enough to be able to look you in the eye. “Walk into the main office. Look amazing. Wait until he arrives. Continue to look so amazing that it will drive him crazy. Sneak off to the storage closet down the hall. Have him fuck me hard, while you watch on your silly little screen.” He gives you a haughty smile. “That’s the plan.”

“It’s not all bad,” you acknowledge, “but I do have some minor concerns.”

Loki frowns. “What concerns?”

“How long do you think the two of you can spend in that storage room before someone starts noticing you’ve disappeared together and haven’t come back?”

Loki shrugs. “I don’t know. Fifteen minutes?”

“I’d say about ten.”

“Twelve.”

You roll your eyes. “This isn’t a negotiation, you know.”

“I still fail to see your point. We can both get off in that time, especially with the thrill of getting caught adding to the excitement.” He gives you a sly grin, eyes twinkling with mischief. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

You smile tightly. “And how much time have you scheduled for preparation?”

Loki opens his mouth to reply, realizes he’s made a miscalculation in his planning, and so closes it again without replying, an increasingly conflicted expression on his face.

You reach up to grab his tie and tug, prompting him to look down at you. “Now now, let’s not get discouraged. We just need to display some... foresight.”

Loki stares at you for a couple of seconds before he catches your drift, at which point he immediately jumps off you and kneels on the floor, reaching for the toy chest under the bed, while you go for the lube in the drawer of the nightstand. By the time you have found it and have righted yourself, Loki is climbing back into your lap and pressing a generously sized butt plug into your free hand. “You will do the honors, won’t you?” he asks, his smile all teeth and audacious charm.

You fix him with a level look, slide your hand under his skirt once more, and snap the edge of his panties. “Off.”

Fingering Loki is always quite the experience. You’ve done it before, but you’re pretty sure it will never get old. This position is different though; the weight of him in your lap, his hands clutching your shoulders, his ragged breathing as he drops down onto your fingers, the little mewls he emits when you crook your fingers to rub against his prostate, it’s all tantalizingly new. You watch him move with your rhythmic pushes up into him, quietly enthralled by the color rising in his cheeks and the way he’s starting to sweat at the temples. You realize to your not-so-subtle delight that you could probably make him come like this.

You still your hand, using the free one to stroke down his flank until you can grip his hip.

Loki lets out a shuddering breath, reluctantly stopping his own movements, caught between wanting to chase his orgasm and following the plan. “Yes. Now.”

You snatch up the plug from the twisted sheets, deftly replacing your fingers with the black rubber. It slips in easily. “Go on then.”

Loki gets to his feet somewhat shakily, pulling his panties back on and smoothing down his skirt. His erection is painfully obvious beneath the tight fabric, but you’re certain he will get it somewhat under control before he leaves the room. He shifts experimentally, getting used to the feeling of the plug inside him.

“You good?”

“Perfectly fine, thank you, Agent.” He gives you a heated look. “I shall see you later.”

“I’ll see you first,” you point out.

He grins. “That you will.”

***

You don’t exactly rush to the security department, because that would be suspicious. The fact that you immediately shut the door behind you when you arrive in the main control room and lock it? Well, that’s unfortunately necessary.

You slide into your chair and scan the screens, finding Loki in seconds. He’s lingering outside the double doors to the open office space that he’s been assigned to, smoothing down his skirt and adjusting his tie. He glances at the camera above the door, and, as if he knows that you’re in place, he winks. You roll your eyes and pull up the wide view of the office as he enters. He’s walking surprisingly steady, everything considered. Then again, you don’t know how used he is to walking in high heels with a butt plug in his ass, but you make mental a note to ask Mobius for his insights into the subject at a later time. He will definitely know.

Loki strolls through the office with a level of confidence most often displayed by ancient royalty, which you suppose is to be expected. As people start to notice his presence, a hush spreads through the room. Loki smirks, the sway of his hips growing more pronounced as every TVA agent’s focus is drawn to him. The way some of them blatantly turn their heads to follow him with their eyes is pretty comical.

He doesn’t go to his own desk, even though he’s got one now. Oh no, he aims straight for Mobius’, which is currently empty. He’s in the middle of a debrief with Renslayer, as you both knew ahead of time. This way would be more effective, and somewhat less suspicious, Loki had claimed. You doubt it, but Loki insisted.

He shrugs off his jacket and sits down in Mobius’ chair somewhat gingerly, shifting briefly to get comfortable before turning the chair a little, leaning back and crossing his legs. The previously modest skirt rides up, displaying his thighs to half the room’s occupants. That’s definitely unprofessional, you think, while your hand automatically moves to the slider that allows you to zoom in.

Loki picks up one of Mobius’ jet ski catalogues, and starts flipping through it, obviously pretending that nothing it out of the ordinary. Eventually people around him manage to tear their eyes away and return to their work, the ambient buzz of clicking keyboards and office small talk filling the space once more.

You are impressed by how still Loki managed to keep himself. Occasionally he will rock back and forth a few times to make the toy shift, but if you didn’t already know what was going on, you probably wouldn’t be noticing the way his face changes at the movement. But as it is, you can just about make out the way he blinks a little slower, brown furrowing a tiny bit, lips parting.

You’re so busy watching Loki, you don’t even notice that Mobius is approaching the office before he’s just outside. Unlike Loki, he doesn’t pause before entering, and once inside he makes a beeline for his desk. As he notices Loki lounging there, he frowns in annoyance. At which point Loki puts down the magazine and swirls the chair a bit more, allowing Mobius full view of his lower body for the first time.

Mobius’ shoulders tense up so quickly and so noticeably that you would have been able to tell even if you hadn’t zoomed it at all. He stares, first at Loki’s legs, then up at his face. The buzzing of the office has died down once more, everyone seemingly holding their breath as they wait to see how Mobius will handle the situation. Sensing their attention on him, Mobius relaxes his shoulders, circles the desk, and throws down the files he was carrying onto the cluttered surface. You can’t see his face clearly at this angle, but you can imagine that he’s probably aiming for quiet disapproval. It’s what he should be feeling.

Loki says something to him in a voice too low for you to hear, and Mobius’ shoulders jerk in what you assume is a snort. The Variant is not being subtle, you note. As a matter of fact, he is leaning forward, looking up at Mobius coquettishly, fluttering his eyelashes as he keeps talking. This time you focus on trying to read his lips. You catch ‘dress code’ and ‘acceptable’.

Mobius folds his arms across his chest. Loki gives him an innocent smile. Mobius nods his head firmly in direction of the office entrance. You suppose he wants to come off as simply disappointed, like he’s going to reprimand Loki somewhere else, but the way Loki gets to his feet screams enthusiasm rather than concern. Mobius turns and starts walking away in a brisk stride, not looking back to see if Loki is following. The second they are out the door though, Loki falls into step beside him rather than trailing behind. He whispers something in Mobius’ ear and Mobius shudders, blushing even as he keeps walking.

You were the one who picked their destination earlier in the day, a storage room located down a couple of lesser used hallways, but close enough to the office for Loki to be able to keep his hands to himself before they’re alone.

Also, the security camera is placed ideally for your particular purpose, so of course there’s that.

Mobius closes the door behind the two of them and locks it. Loki walks into the middle of the room and turns to grin at him, opening his mouth to make what would no doubt extremely witty comment, but it dies on his tongue as Mobius seizes the front of his jacket and pushes Loki back against one of the shelving units with enough force to make the metal rattle. Loki gasps, bracing himself on the shelf that’s level with his lower back. Mobius crushes their lips together with no further preamble, and Loki groans deeply, one hand moving to grab the back on Mobius’ neck.

You note with no small amount of satisfaction that you picked the right room, well-lit and small enough for the microphone that’s connected to the camera to pick up even the smallest sound of pleasure Loki makes as the two of them kiss. It’s perfect.

Mobius reluctantly breaks the kiss, glancing up at the security camera. “I doubt this was your idea,” he says, obviously aimed at you.

“She barely even protested,” Loki purrs, reaching for Mobius’ tie and pulling it sharply to bring his attention back to him.

Mobius complies, catching Loki’s lips in another deep kiss. Moments later he presses his leg forward, slotting it between Loki’s. The skirt rides up again as Loki’s hips arch forward seemingly by their own accord, and he breaks the kiss and throws his head back against the shelves, breathing raggedly as he rubs himself off against Mobius’ thigh. Mobius hands make their way to Loki’s waist and hip, encouraging the movement.

“What do you want, kitten?”

Loki takes several seconds to focus enough to formulate the answer. “I want you to fuck me.”

Mobius chuckles. “I don’t think we have time for that, love,” he replies, planting small kissing along Loki’s jaw, as if in apology. “People will wonder where we’ve disappeared to.”

Loki lets out a breathy laugh, glancing at the camera. “The two of you share a single, boring, overanalytical brain, don’t you?” He reaches down and hitches up his skirt, pushes down his panties, and then grabs Mobius’ hand and forcefully pulls it down between his legs.

You can tell exactly when Mobius discovers the plug, because he goes completely still for a couple of seconds before turning his head to the camera as well. “The two of your will be the death of me.”

You chuckle under your breath, knowing you could probably do worse. At least Loki could.

Mobius shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it onto a tower of cardboard boxes, then turns Loki around with practiced efficiency, sliding his hand up the backs of his thighs, squeezing the firm flesh of his ass as the skirt is pushed up completely, bunching around Loki’s waist. The angle you’re getting is exquisite, which definitely isn’t a coincidence. Loki’s ridiculously long legs are on full display, accentuated by the heels, and when Mobius reaches down to teasingly start playing with the plug the ensuing arch of his back is frankly breathtaking.

“How long did you wait for me?” Mobius asks, mouthing at the side of Loki’s throat.

Loki groans. “Too long.”

“Sitting there, in my chair, already slick and ready.” He shifts the angle of the plug, and judging by the noise Loki makes, it’s now rubbing against his prostate. “Was it difficult, hiding what you were up to? Not letting people know just how much of a slut you are?”

Loki chuckles breathlessly. “I possess a high level of self-control.” The way he’s pressing back against Mobius is evidence to the contrary, but Loki doesn’t seem to realize that.

The irony isn’t lost on Mobius though, but he doesn’t comment on it. He finally pulls the plug out, setting it down on the shelf by Loki’s waist. He replaces it with his fingers, slowly sliding them in and out, making a show out of it for your benefit. It certainly isn’t to satisfy Loki, who by now is shivering with pent-up energy.

“Mobius,” he all-but whines.

“Just making sure she did a thorough job,” Mobius mutters. “It was her, wasn’t it? Working you open, getting you ready for me?”

Mobius rarely does this, talks dirty with such intent, but it’s having a clear impact on Loki, who nods erratically. “Yeah, it was her.”

“Did she let you come?” Mobius asks.

Loki shakes his head. “No, no. She wanted – I wanted...” he trails off into a gasp as Mobius pushes his fingers deeper.

“To come on my cock?” Mobius asks in an unbelievably level voice, especially considering the fact that he’s working his belt open with his free hand.

“Yes,” Loki hisses, “Please, Mobius, fuck me. I’m ready, I can take it, I need you.”

You used more lube than was strictly necessary for inserting the plug, but that was on purpose. When Mobius withdraws his fingers, there’s easily enough slick on them to allow him to spread it onto his cock once he’s finally got himself in hand. At this point he’s obviously growing tired with keeping up the air of aloofness, because once he’s lined himself up to Loki’s hole, he pushes in faster than he normally would, spending only a few shallow thrusts before burying himself fully in Loki’s body.

Here's the thing: you’ve been wet since Loki first climbed into your lap back in Mobius’ apartment. It has taken all your willpower to ignore your own arousal until this point, to just observe, but by now the tense pressure between your thighs has become too much to bear. You lean back in your chair, pop the button of your pants, pull down the zipper, and shove them down around your thighs. The chair creaks just loud enough to drown out the sound of your relief as you finally touch yourself.

The noises Loki is making are beautiful, breathy little mewls that turn to persistent, wanton moans as Mobius starts thrusting into him, hard and steady. Loki braces himself against metal shelves, holding on as Mobius fucks him, sounds encouragement spilling freely from his lips. He’s not even trying to keep quiet.

And he was right about one thing; the thrill of doing this in a place where they could theoretically get caught is obviously spurring both of them on. Mobius’s grip on Loki’s hips is unyielding, his movements a lot faster and a lot more focused than they would normally be at this point. But he does notice when Loki reaches down and starts jerking himself off, only letting him get away with it for a minute or so before grabbing Loki’s wrist and firmly pulling his hand away. Loki moans pathetically, although the sound soon morphs into pleasure as Mobius takes over stroking him.

You double down on your own efforts, rubbing your clit firmly as your bite your lip to keep quiet yourself, because there are infinitely more people walking past just outside your door at any given moment.

They’re close, both of them. Loki is on the point of tensing up, his breath hitching in his throat, when Mobius suddenly stops the movement of his hand, squeezing around the base of Loki’s cock. Loki lets out a confused whine, and for some reason, you still your own hand, although you had been hurdling towards your own climax.

“We can’t have that, kitten,” Mobius growls. “Leaving evidence like that would be dangerous.”

“Fuck,” Loki curses, trying to twist his body to get what he needs to push him over the edge, but Mobius is unrelenting. Seconds later he comes inside Loki with a long groan, but at no point does he show Loki the slightest amount of pity. Instead he ignores Loki’s frantic whimpers of protest and pulls out of him, expertly snatching the butt plug off the shelf and pushing it back into place, trapping his come inside Loki’s body. He pats Loki’s hip with steady finality. When Loki realizes what’s going on, he turns around, a frantic look on his face. “You can’t do this.”

Mobius tilts his head, already tugging himself back into his trousers. “Do what?” he asks, plucking his jacket up and producing a handkerchief from his pocket, meticulously wiping his fingers clean with it.

“Leave me in this state!”

Mobius chuckles. “Payback is a bitch, kitten.” He puts the handkerchief away. “You brought this on yourself, dressing like this just to rile me up.” He starts putting the jacket back on.

Loki practically launches himself at Mobius, stopping his attempt at dressing. “Please,” he says, “I can’t go back to the office like this.”

Mobius hums, considering. Eventually he turns to the security camera. “Do you think he deserves it?”

“Yes,” you breathe on pure instinct, even though they can’t hear you. You press your fingertips against your clit for just the slightest amount of relief, but nothing more.

It doesn’t seem to matter that you’re not in the same room, Mobius appears to be reading your mind. “The two of you did put a lot of effort into this little game...” he muses, his attention drifting back to Loki. He reaches up and trails two fingers along Loki’s jaw, then continuing the caress down his throat, stopping at the edge on his shirt collar. Loki shudders visibly. “And I’m not really a vengeful man.”

Loki shakes his head. “You’re not.”

Mobius smiles, first at Loki, then at the camera. “We’re having words later, the three of us. I put up with way too much around here.” He sighs, throws the jacket back off and then, with a grace that people might not expect from a man his age, he sinks to his knees in front of Loki.

You make a sound very similar to the one Loki makes – surprise, arousal - which is disturbing, but fuck it, you don’t care. As Mobius slides a hand up Loki’s leg, from ankle to thigh, you relax back in your seat, idly returning to your own task.

“You do look exquisite,” Mobius murmurs, pressing a kiss to the inside of Loki’s thigh before grabbing his ankle and urging him to lift his leg. Loki complies, hooking his knee over Mobius’ shoulder, disturbing his balance for a second before he leans back against the shelves again to steady himself.

And Mobius was right earlier: he’s not the type to seek petty revenge. If he was, he would have made sure Loki had lifted the leg that would cut off your view of the proceedings. He did not. You can’t help but smile, knowing that for all his protests, he’s more than willing to indulge you and Loki both.

Loki lets out a relived sigh and throws his head back when Mobius finally takes his cock into his mouth. He doesn’t reach for him, but you can see his calf muscles tense as he digs his heel into Mobius’ back, urging him on. Mobius obviously doesn’t need the encouragement, he’s already falling into the rhythm Loki prefers during oral sex, and yes, you’ve got that one down as well. Gods help you.

There’s no teasing involved, just a single-minded effort to get Loki off, and it’s working like a charm. You struggle to catch up without the physical presence of another person to stimulate you, but Loki’s sounds of pleasure help you get there soon enough. Just as you hover on the edge, he comes in Mobius’ mouth with a ragged moan, and you follow seconds after, inadvertently closing your eyes and whimpering out loud as your climax crashes over you. When you open them again, still panting, Mobius has already got Loki back on both feet, and is pulling his skirt down into place. Loki is breathing just as heavily as you, eyes focused on Mobius, a look of reverence on his face. When Mobius casually picks Loki’s panties off the floor and puts them in his pocket, Loki can’t help but look pleased.

The groan Mobius makes when he gets to his feet is all show, you know that. You can see the glimmer of mischief in his eyes as he tells Loki, “The things I do for you, kitten... I should get a raise.”

Loki laughs, adjusting his tie and trying to push his hair back into its previous, professional style. “I’m sure Renslayer would approve it, if you asked.”

Mobius doesn’t take the bait. “Very funny. Now, I’m going to go back to work. If you want to go... change... that would obviously be acceptable.”

Loki straightens, a little wobbly on his feet as he closes the short distance between them and gives Mobius a long kiss before saying, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

***

You make it to Mobius’ apartment before Loki through a combination of it being a little closer to the security department and Loki still wearing his high heels, which slows him down a little. By the time he enters you’re already naked and getting the shower running. You let him push you up against bathroom door, kissing him with barely-tempered desperation as you help him out of his clothes. He fucks you in the shower, the sound of the water doing absolutely nothing to drown out the noises you both make, now completely unhindered by any potential discovery. After you’ve both come – you first, screaming – him second, biting down on your shoulder - you carefully work the plug out of him and throw it on the floor of the shower stall. Mobius will find it later and disapprove of the rude treatment of his precious toys, but you’re honestly too busy trading messy kisses with Loki under the water that never runs cold no matter how long you stay under it to care what Mobius will say.

Getting dressed is slow going simply because you keep getting distracted by each other, giggling like teenagers, but in the end, you have to put a stop to the fun, even though watching Loki putting on clothes, especially his regular clothes, is a lot less fun than watching him take them off.

By the time you’re back in your uniform and Loki is buckling his belt, both of you have calmed down. You help him straighten his tie. “This was fun,” you say, aiming for a casual tone and missing the mark by quite a bit.

Loki chuckles. “Yes. I do believe I will keep that skirt.”

“Maybe get your panties back from Mobius at some point.”

He smiles. “Maybe. At some point.”

You give him a final, light kiss. “Back to work, Variant.”

“Yes, Agent.”

Chapter Twenty one: Quidam Pt. 3

Greed raised an eyebrow as he watched Envy finally stirred from being knocked out by the botched shapeshifting hijack. There was some debate in Lust’s mind about letting Gluttony treat himself to some deliciously diseased Hohenheim flesh before her train of thought got derailed by the all too familiar pissed off hiss of Envy waking up. The Elrics turned to watch the bizarre amalgamation of serpent and artificial humanoid abomination waking up finally, their overgrown fang looking teeth bared right at Hohenheim. Dolly, still being away in Slumberland, didn’t make this scenario any brighter or better for Hohenheim as Envy finally let the unconscious killer hairball out of their grip. Hohenheim, oh Hohenheim just sat frozen in their seat with Freddy sort’ve rooting for the horrid reptile to kill off the already unpleasant time of having the ancient alchemist in the household.

 “William! You’re awake!” Hohenheim finally spoke, hoping to break the tension circulating in the air. “My…name…is…ENVY..I’m Envy..” Envy hissed, still getting some control back to their speech, though it still felt like they were squeaking out air from a deflated tire. 

 “Now, now, you don’t have to call yourself that anymore, I’m here now!” Hohenheim the slowly becoming undead fail parent clearly didn’t pick up on Envy’s rightful anger. “Bitch…I picked this name…myself…I don’t want you here anymore or to even show yourself around me ever again..” Envy struggled a bit to lift themself up thanks to having a serpentine bottom at the moment.

 “I don’t understand…I’m your father and I finally came to make things right!” Hohenheim pleaded as it became clear, he was about as delusional as that dreadful ex wife called Dante. “Five..hundred years…too late…piss off…” Envy gave up on trying to lift themself up as they wished they could projectile spit poisonous acid at Hohenheim at that moment.

 “But I’m…” Hohenheim attempted once more like a broken record before getting cut off by a very annoyed homunculus Hughes. “That’s enough, I’ve stayed quiet for the sake of the Elrics being here, but now I’m going to have to step in. As a father, if you even dare call yourself that after what you demonstrated, I wouldn’t even DREAM of abandoning my own child and calling them a monster for so long to only try crawling back to them. Sure you’ve acknowledged you’ve done wrong and apologized, good for you,  but it isn’t your child’s responsibility to accept or even let you back in. Envy, do you want me to zap this man for you if he doesn’t leave?” Hughes tore right into Hohenheim, he was very much done with that ancient, body stealing old man.

 “Please….do so…I’m so done…” Envy hissed, hoping whatever force out there would grant them that pleasure of seeing Hohenheim being reduced into a grease stain.

 “You heard Envy, I’ll be nice to give you a head start running. Five…” Hughe took off his shades to make things a bit easier to use that dreaded heat vision.

 “I’ll give you space for now, but I’ll be back son! I still need a word with you later!” Hohenheim proclaimed as he slowly started to back up to the door. “Three…” Hughe’s eyes began to take on a reddish coloration as the dreaded heat ray prepared to be launched.

 Upon seeing this, Hohenheim fled the household much like a raccoon being chased off from the garbage cans, disappearing into the woods. Hughes took in a deep breath as they powered down from nearly having to use the heat vision. Certainly, this will require the sweet relief of eye drops later given how drying the heat vision could be on poor Hughes as he checked on Envy. Doing the best impression of a floor pancake, Envy hissed in annoyance that they still couldn’t lift their upper body just yet as Lust went to fetch the gremlin their kibbles. 

 “Now that you’re up, let’s get some red stones into you, we have no idea how bad the mercury poisoning is and frankly…you’re going to give Gluttony nightmares with your appearance right now.” Lust said as she sat down next to Envy to spoon feed them their red stones so some ability to shift can be returned.

 “Well thanks Lust for insulting my stylish new look…. I think I look perfect…. thank you very much….” Envy snarkily responded as they got a mouth full of red stones shoved in, crushing the mini human soup rocks between their gnarled teeth. 

 “Envy, you have horrible fangs and can’t even lift yourself up, what makes you think that this look is gonna stay?” Freddy evidently had no clue that Envy was just playing around with Lust in a sibling-like antic. 

 “Face Fur, you have no sense of sarcasm do you….? Of course I want to get my ideal form back right away….it sucks being stuck on this floor with you staring at me like one of Greed’s sideshow freaks…” Envy got a chance to speak for a bit before another round of kibbles went in.

 “Well good news for you dark and gruesome, once you get your kibbles in, we’re hauling you off to the medical bay so we can finally get Dolly in her own room. It didn’t help that you both have stupidly strong grips.”  Freddy huffed a bit as he glanced over to Dolly, but only to get hissed at by the clay assholes.

 “No…I want Dolly to stay close to me…” Envy protested, now moving their arms to push up a bit of that upper body strength. “Fuck no, you’re letting her recover in peace! We already have the clay monstrosities here acting like her nurses right now, ugly nurses.” Freddy wrinkled his nose at the thought of having to deal with more very aesthetically displeasing nurses around Dolly. “Oh fuck you Face Fur….Ernest and Dorian are perfectly wonderful nurses and they look cute…” Envy was very, VERY tempted to attempt a slither towards Freddy to traumatize the displeasing Face Fur nuisance. “Whatever, look Envy, Freddy here is telling yah no in being an absolute creep. Maybe once you’re not a slithering asshole, then we can let you check in on Dolly with supervision seeing as you’re likely going to try and steal her horribly ugly clay dogs here.” Greed chimed in, shrugging a bit as he really doesn’t care so long as he’s being amused by the discourse. “They’re not dogs….they’re lions…” Envy glared at Greed for messing up on what Ernest and Dorian are supposed to be. 

 “I tried so hard to make them look like lions too….They’re not dogs….” Freddy felt his self esteem as an artist being punched to oblivion by Greed’s words.

 “Shit man…you don’t need to be teary eyed over it, they look like ugly dogs to me, but hey they can look like lions to other people I guess..” Greed said, slightly taken aback that there was a huge fuss over calling Ernest and Dorian ugly clay dogs. 

for the ask meme: Rex/Obi or pairing/characters of choice - Werewolf/vampire AU / Sick/injured / Stranded Due to Inclement Weather / Huddling for warmth

For this trope mashup meme.

This was CLEARLY influenced by seananmcguire's Newsflesh series, which was the last zombie related media I interacted with, and I regret NOTHING.

(Meanwhile, much worldbuilding was done by Dogmatix, who I was foolish enough to let near the plunnies again ^_^)

*****

The problem with zombies, Obi-Wan couldn’t help but muse, was that they stopped thinking. Oh, there was some low-level intelligence left in there, but it was mostly focused on consuming the living. Not tactics, for the most part, not unless the bastards were very fresh or in large enough groups, but that also meant that when some brilliant asshole declared “oh, the zombies wouldn’t/couldn’t ever do that,” no one consulted the zombies.

Thus, an early morning patrol in an area that “never saw more than one or two zombies” turned into a clusterfuck retreat. Though ‘patrol’ was rather a gross overstatement for just the two of them taking an idle walk because some days, Rex was too jittery for sleep and too damn self-sacrificing to admit that he missed early morning runs.

There was always enough fog coming in from the river that they should have been fine.

There also shouldn’t have been an entire pack of at least a dozen, dozen and a half zombies in the area. Where the fuckers had even come from was an unpleasant mystery.

“Rex?” Obi-Wan murmured into the man’s ear. “Are you with me?” he asked as if he couldn’t make out the glacially slow beat of his heart.

Rex groaned, head lolling to nestle further in the crook of Obi-Wan’s neck. He mumbled something that was probably a curse, which left Obi-Wan in the unenviable position of having to close his eyes and take his own steadying breath. Yes, on the one hand he did have an unfairly attractive boyfriend draped across his lap, straddling his hips and feeling like he was several seconds away from some serious necking.

On the other, they were also treed a good thirty feet above a pack of damned zombies, which had already tried seriously munching on Rex, and ‘necking’ could have serious consequences when one of them was an actual vampire.

Speaking of. Obi-Wan shifted in the cautious little jig in an attempt to nudge Rex more to the left. If he could just free up his arm enough, then he could move around while not tossing them off the tree stand or dislodging the thick emergency poncho that was the only thing keeping Rex from turning into a charred crisp. It was not sized for two, but there hadn’t been time to be more careful and drape it over just Rex instead of just plonking it down over the two of them.

“If you refuse to leave base again without your entire damned armor because of this, I’m going to be very put out,” Obi-Wan informed him, getting another incoherent unhappy noise. The armor was good at keeping the soldiers bite free – not that they needed to worry about the zombification business, but it still hurt them and fed the damn undead. It was also effective at keeping the soldiers touch starved and isolated in ways Obi-Wan had difficulty standing.

Another careful shift, and he could just barely dig out one of the small, squishy packs he kept in his jacket for emergencies.

Since his luck was shit, as soon as he pulled it free, the bastard caught on a loose thread, and with his claws he didn’t dare grab too hard for it, and down it tumbled. One of the zombies lunged, snapping at it, and blood exploded all across the remains of the bastard’s face.

Not being too intelligent, the rest of the pack turned on it immediately. Obi-Wan tried to tune out the disgusting carnage, being much more careful on his second attempt. He didn’t have many packets to spare. This one, he managed to juggle up in front of Rex’s face, jostling it a little. “Here. Drink,” he ordered, hoping that would be sufficient. He hated trying to insert the little sippy straws – Anakin had loved juice pouches back as a child, and they’d had similar fiendish straws. Anakin had learned how to insert the little bastards without a problem, but he always asked Obi-Wan to do it for him – because Obi-Wan had never quite managed to master the process, and Anakin was a damned brat.

Bad enough when it was juice.

One way or another, Rex was conscious enough to shift and bite down on the plastic packet. It was always a wonder to watch the soldiers’ regenerative powers at work. As the level of mostly artificial plasma lowered, color drained back into Rex’s face, the nasty burns along truly unfair cheekbones fading as muscle and skin reknit. He could smell the distressing blood-and-raw-meat stench fading, and only then did he start to relax.

When things had started to go to hell around the globe, the powers that be had huddled together around their failing infrastructure and went looking for fantastical solutions to unnatural problems. Obi-Wan could only imagine the levels of exhaustion and terror that had led someone to the conclusion that vampires might be immune to the infections that spread the zombie virus. The sheer potential of that going horribly wrong was at least one movie franchise long, if not several, yet somehow they’d dedicated enough science to make artificial vampires. Oh, technically it wasn’t vampirism, but ‘drank blood, super fast and strong, sunburn to death within minutes, resting vitals dropping down far enough to pass as dead’ was close enough for everyone but petty bureaucrats and pedantic assholes.

Even at the time, Obi-Wan had cynically noted how that meant both a short leash, and a strong vested interest in keeping as many people from going zombie as possible. He’d also noted the infuriating demographics of those who were selected for and survived the process of becoming vampires.

He tried not to think on that much nowadays, because the heightened blood pressure and carnage bothered Rex.

The packet slurped dry in a way that always raised Obi-Wan’s hackles, then Rex blinked up at him a few times in confusion. “You’re fuzzy,” Rex accused.

“That’s called a beard, dear,” Obi-Wan drawled in his most obnoxious tone, pretending he didn’t also have fur sprouting most places, nor the partial muzzle of a transformation enough to give him speed and jumping ability enough to get to one of the safe perches they’d set up weeks ago.

The Powers That Be might have created vampires, but they had also somehow missed the small but stubborn population of entirely naturally occurring werewolves (and affiliated were-creatures) around the world. Some, like Obi-Wan and his pack, were doing their damndest to both keep a low profile and help the poor bastards trying to protect the last of humanity.

Some, like Obi-Wan, might have become unwisely open to certain non-lycanthropes due to unfortunate feelings – not that Obi-Wan was ever about to complain about that.

Either his sarcastic tone or the guttural noises of thwarted zombies sank in, because Rex stiffened and glared down. “Fuck!” he hissed, thighs clenching in a way that Obi-Wan both very much did and very much did not appreciate. His eyes damn well crossed at the wiggle that followed – he could only guess that Rex was going for a weapon that he didn’t have.

“Stop that!” he snarled, letting the wolf out a little more. He needed the muscle and mass to keep Rex in place, longer paws digging into the tree trunk for a slightly more secure hold that was notgroping his idiot boyfriend.

His idiot boyfriend leveled a flat, unimpressed look at him. “Really?” Rex grumped. His eyes flicked down, then back up. “Right now?”

“So sorry, but some of us don’t need to ingest extra blood to get it up, and under less fraught circumstances this might be my idea of a good time.” He tried for a drawl, but it was much more strained than he meant. Oh well, it wasn’t like Rex didn’t know he could be ridiculous. And it really wasn’t intentional.

“Less fraught meaning less zombies?”

“And less daylight.” Obi-Wan didn’t mean for his tone to turn sharp, either, but it did even as he very carefully wrapped his arms tighter around Rex. He made certain not to disturb the poncho, but he, at least, wanted the reassurance. He still wasn’t over the terror of having to go mostly wolf to grab Rex from the pack he was trying to slow down, nor the horror of slinging him over a shoulder to go pelting through the trees. Madcap desperation to find a tree stand before a foggy dawn was not his idea of fun. “Your life is worth a hell of a lot more than an inconvenient hard on.”

Rex huffed a laugh, leaning in to rest his cheek against Obi-Wan’s. “Stop being charming.”

“I’m afraid that’s going to happen approximately never. So sorry.”

For a moment, it was just them – two idiots cuddled together, healthy and alive on a genuinely beautiful, bright Spring morning.

Then a terrible gurgling noise broke the moment, and Rex glanced down at the pack still mingling around the tree, groaning their displeasure at not remembering how to climb. “Was that a zombie?” he asked, as if he damn well didn’t know the truth.

“Shapeshifting burns calories,” Obi-Wan reminded him primly. “As does marathon sprints lugging around idiots like potato sacks.”

“That explains the bruises on my stomach,” he muttered, shifting about to rummage in one of Obi-Wan’s pockets. “Jerky?”

“Please.” All in all, now that matters were calmer, Obi-Wan almost hoped that a rescue would take its sweet time. This was almost nice – all things considered.

~end

The Infiltration: Part One of Three

To say that two shapeshifters stood in the basement laboratory of a government building wouldn't be quite accurate. One shapeshifter stood in the basement laboratory. The other could more honestly be described as meticulously sculpted into shape. The particles that made up his body were arranged into the shape of a standing man, held in place by static cling, but that wasn't really standing. It was a rough approximation of standing, just like everything about Flint Marko was a rough approximation of a human being. He'd long since gotten used to the fact, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant.

The other shapeshifter, Reed Richards, leaned against a table that was great for projecting holograms but terrible for holding papers or drinks. Fancy and impractical equipment like this was one of the Cape Code Authority's most well-known features.

A third man stood in this laboratory too, off to one side. He was, in a way, the exact opposite of a shapeshifter. More on him later.

"I've taken some time to look into your request," Richards said as he tapped a few icons on the tabletop. "Here's the basics of my thoughts so far. A shell to house your nervous system and respond to electrical signals."

There was a sound like sand sliding down a dune before Flint began to speak. It had taken him a long time to relearn how to talk after becoming the Sandman; even now, it took effort to hold the shape of those granular vocal cords as he spoke in a deep and raspy voice. "Yeah. Y'said that last time, Doc. What's changed?"

Richards, in response, pinched an image on the tabletop and widened it out, his fingers stretching like rubber bands to expand the picture further. He raised his arm--he seemed to ignore his joints, the entire limb bending like a garden hose--and flicked one finger up, and a hologram rose out of the table's display to cast a soft white glow over the room. The hologram looked like eggshells glued to an Erector set, arranged into the shape of a bipedal form that lay on the table as if it were a stretcher. "What's changed is that I've done some research into actually making that shell. Take a look, I've drafted up a basic schematic for what it'd look like."

"And you decided it'd look like a Phantom?"

Richards snorted, but ignored the question. "The outermost shell is solid-light holography," he continued, making a vague swiping gesture through the air above the image. The eggshell faded out, revealing the bare animatronic beneath, which (judging by the sculpted face made of sand) Flint found even less impressive. Frowning, Richards looked down at the hologram again and added, "We could, given some finagling, calibrate it to resemble an actual human. But generating these 3D models is a pain, so I didn't bother."

Perhaps a more critical mind would have asked why, if 3D models were such a pain, they bothered to use holograms at all instead of pen and paper. But Flint's mind had never been an especially critical one; he was in no way stupid, but for all his life had tended to take things as they came. Instead he asked, "Is that why it looks like a Phantom? 'Cuz you're just recycling a picture you already had?"

"Not letting that go, eh?" Richards replied, the ghost of a smirk on his face as he glanced up at the Sandman again. He waved his hand again, and the computer misinterpreted his gesture and deactivated the projection of the suit. Rolling his eyes, Richards reactivated the hologram and said, "No. Well, partially. It looks like a Phantom because that technology is what a lot of my idea is based on. You see, what you're asking for is very similar to how the technology works anyway--an artificial support structure for a unique nervous system. The only difference is that your nervous system is two gallons of granulated silica, whereas the Phantoms are currently working with--"

And here he stopped, falling silent and stoic. His eyes, suddenly devoid of their smiling crow's feet, glanced Flint's way before his disgusting elastic fingers returned to typing on the touchscreen between them. The pile of sand, insomuch as it could, looked confused.

"What?" he said, in a voice like a seashell crushed underfoot on a beach. "What're the Phantoms workin' with? I thought they were just robots."

This was a common misconception, and Richards, like most of the Cape Code Authority, had a vested interest in upholding it. "Phantoms" were the colloquial name for Perpetual Holographic Avatar/Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters. Bipedal, autonomous drones with light weaponry, they were the foot soldiers of the CCA, the beat cops, the cavalry when an agent wanted reinforcement. They had been in development since the War of the Worlds had brought the Chitauri and all their technology to Earth six years ago, and some of the core technology of the drones was better kept unknown. What Richards had said threatened to jeopardise that secrecy.

The third man in the room chose then to speak. Stepping forward, his black cloak obscuring the entirety of his six-foot-plus form, he spoke with a voice that was digitally altered to be an octave deeper. "They are robots," he said, his white face mask moving like genuine flesh. "Their processors have a unique method of operation, though. They have some of the most sophisticated A.I. in the world, and their microprocessors are similar enough to a human's that it won't require too much tinkering to render it compatible with your...situation."

This was Scrier--or rather, a Scrier; one of many--and he was a champion liar. Nobody quite knew when he had joined the CCA or what level he occupied, but the executives of the organization seemed to treat him as a special case. He never answered distress calls, except to break up protests and strikes. He had no patrol routes, no assigned partners, and the only training courses he attended were the ones he taught--the ones about corporate rights and the agency's responsibility to them. Agents weren't allowed to try and investigate Scrier's identity. For all they knew, he was an undercover boss trying to hear his subordinates' opinions on him.

This was true, but it was a little more specific than that.

"Yes!" Richards said, gesturing towards the man gratefully. "Thank you, Scrier. I didn't know how exactly to put that. Yes, Phantoms run on a very human-like system. In theory, adapting it to suit your nervous system should be far easier than trying to create something out of whole cloth."

"I thought you were like a super genius," Flint said, sounding a bit annoyed. "You've invented flying cars and indestructible fabrics that let you go to space. You have yer own interdimensional portal. Why is this taking so much thought? Why does this need to be made out of other stuff and spit and prayers?"

Richards gave him a blank glare for a few seconds before sighing. "Okay," he said, leaning on the table. "First of all, I am a genius. I'm one of the smartest people to ever live, but that doesn't mean I know everything. I have to research and experiment. Any innovation, even one from me, takes time." He waved his hand again and the hologram vanished. "Second of all, remember: I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart."

"You're doing this because that was my condition!" Flint shot back, and the pile of sand swelled slightly and grew almost half a foot. He raised his arms; granules fell from the sculptures and scattered across the floor. "That's what I said when I joined this stupid super-cop thing! I hate being the Sandman, Doc! You guys offered to give me this--this job of disrupting protests and taking down unregistered super-guys because your bosses told me you could make me...not."

He glanced down at his hands. And indeed hands they were; years of practice had let him sculpt the sand at the end of his arms into an incredibly realistic form, with perfectly jointed fingers. You could almost see what must have once been his fingerprints. But as he looked at them a small stream of sand fell from them to the ground.

"I'm not expectin' you to make me human again," he said. "But just...something that'll make me feel more human. Something that feels like a body." His features hardened again, sand dunes into sandstone. "If you're just half-assing that--if you're just giving me something that-that makes people treat me like a Phantom and that'll break in like a week--"

And here he stopped. There was more than just a salary that kept agents of the Cape Code Authority in line. You had a lot of wiggle room as a superhero registered under them: you could slack off on the job, you could issue arrests for what you were pretty sure was a crime, you could stop and frisk anyone you liked, you could be sure that the beatings you gave to unarmed suspects were graciously forgiven by your superiors. But one thing you couldn't do was leave. Quitting the CCA was a surefire way to bring the coworkers you had once trusted down on your head; no longer registered, you had no more immunity than a child experimenting with the most basic powers did. Nobody wanted to find themselves imprisoned in Complex 42--stranded inescapably in the Negative Zone, tortured by armed guards and experimented on to replicate your powers, only protected from the hostile, annihilating environment outside the prison by a few wafer-thin force fields. But that was exactly where Flint's line of thinking threatened to take him.

"...Forget it," he mumbled, defeated, and as he slumped down slightly his face and body lost much of its detail.

Richards stared across the table with an uncomfortable air. Glancing down at the table, he tapped a few keys on it and the hologram vanished. With one hand he pushed his glasses up, and then his arm stretched the five feet across the table and patted Flint's semblance of a shoulder.

"Look," he said. "I can't make any promises. You're...unprecedented, Marko. The only shapeshifter of your kind. I'm doing the best I can to help you. But if I can use technology we already have to do it, then I'm going to. You're not my only job in the CCA. But I'm working on it." He took his hand back, and then needed a second to brush off the sand that had come with it. "...It's getting late. We ought to call it a day, I need to head home."

"Have to convince Susan not to walk out on you again?" Scrier suggested, already heading for the door.

Reed just dragged his hand down his face, his features stretching in his grip, and didn't answer. His eyes were bagged and his posture tired. Instead he began to trudge towards the door, each leg bending like it was made of plasticine, and followed by an animate pile of sand.

The light of streetlights and storefront signs shone through the windows as the three of them stepped out of the laboratory. About ten feet away, a custodian looked up from the floor he was mopping and gave the trio a quizzical expression, but the only one who paid him any mind was Scrier, whose expression was hard to parse through the prosthetic mask. Richards and Flint just began to head the opposite direction down the hall.

"Hey! Scrier! Don't you have some skulking to do somewhere else?!" Flint called back.

As the door to the lab swung closed, the janitor adjusted his grip on the mop and looked back down at his work. Scrier, after a second more of staring, turned away and began to saunter off.

It was a long hallway. They kept walking for a good long while before they turned and were out of sight. And for all that time the janitor continued to mop and silently sweated, waiting for them to notice that the security cameras weren't moving like they usually did. Even when the three Cape Code Authority agents were gone, the custodian continued to work. He worked until the vibrations of their footsteps through the floor had faded into the background tremors of the environment. And even longer than that, until the buzz of spider-sense in the back of his mind had subsided slightly, no longer quite so focused on them.

Beneath the Moon -part 3

Sanders Sides: Logan, Roman Blurb: After all the research he’d done, after all the signs he’d been experiencing. Logan needed someone to tell him he wasn’t crazy. And Roman…Roman had always been the one most likely to believe in the fantastical, the impossible, the…supernatural. Fic Type: Werewolf!AU Overall Fic Warnings: Bite Wound -Semi-Detailed, Dog Attack Mention, Injuries, War Talk, Fighting Talk, Death/Dying Talk, Gun Mention, Shapeshifting/Transformation, Brief Sensory Overload,  Taglist in Reblog.

To Catch Up: Part 1  Part 2 

The one key detail that had been consistent in every source Logan had looked up about werewolves was the change. 

While the imagery used in each had varied, the descriptions overall had remained the same. Changing into a wolf would hurt. He would feel like he was on fire. Burning as his body was forcibly changed from one form to another.

Heat. 

Because everything became more malleable when it was warm. Ice would melt. Plastic would bend. Metal would pool. 

Heat was the source of change. 

So to become a wolf. He would have to burn.

And yet.

All Logan felt was cold. Frozen really. Like he was stuck in a glacier, his heart slowly pounding, fighting against the tidal wave of ice that threatened to engulf him. Pounding like the waves of the ocean beating against the shore. The pull of the cool tide dragging at him, beckoning him to fall into the moon. To get lost in the never ending white light as it filled his entire vision. Filled his vision despite him knowing that only the top sliver of it had appeared. That the whole moon shouldn’t be visible just yet. That there was no way for him to be able to reach the moon from here.

There was a roaring in his ears as his breath caught in his throat, his body going rigid even as his feet shifted to run away, to hide from this empty void of space that called to him as the moon rose higher, beckoning him to let go of the earth and float into the sky with it. To free himself from the restraints of gravity and just---

Accept it.

The faint thought echoed distantly in his head as a soft whimper left his throat.

You said you would accept it.

The moon filled his vision. Pulsating. Like a beacon, it called to him. Called to him in a way that it shouldn’t. The moon had never held such an allure before now and his mind frantically fought against the impossibility. How could an object in space hold such power? How could it force him to be anything than what he was. 

Human.

Accept it.

Werewolves shouldn’t exist!

But research had shown. The bite on his hand--he--he---

Like a lonely foghorn sounding over the misty shores at night, a single howl broke through his turbulent thoughts, echoing in the night, overtaking any other sound, demanding his attention. 

Demanding an answer.

That answer was wedged in his throat. The urge to--to--but--he--he couldn’t-- 

Accept it. 

The howl echoed again and Logan could have sworn he saw a shadowy form flit across the surface of the moon. 

A shadow that looked like a wolf.

Logan shuddered, the shadow growing bigger in his vision, the eyes within glowing bright like the sun as it turned to face him, staring him down, the ice in his body threatening to drown freeze him, feeling the need to cry out to--to--

Howl. 

You said--

Accept it.

He had to--there was no denying with how the moon was calling to him. He had to if he wanted any chance of keeping his human mind.

Shuddering from the ice that seemed to flow through his veins, Logan threw his head back and let out an answering howl, calling for--for--he didn’t know. For the wolf? For it to come to him?

His voice still echoing in his ears, the shadow on the moon pounced, despite the impossibility of it all, wrapping around him like a warm current, heating the frozen ache that held his muscles captive like a warm wind on a hot summer day.

He couldn’t help but melt into that warmth as it massaged the ice away, falling to his hands and knees as a soft lilting voice whispered in his ear.

Welcome brother. 

His heart skipped a beat at those two very simple words. 

Simple words that he hadn’t felt applied to him either singly or together in a very very long time.

“Logan?” 

A chill ran down his spine as the warmth vanished as quickly as it had engulfed him, leaving him to stagger in place, his body feeling--feeling--

Not human.

Definitely not human.

His eyes flashed open and he flinched back at the not--at the--his eyes---he wasn’t seeing how he was used to seeing! It was too...clear? He knew it was night. The colors--He shook his head, heart pounding painfully quick as a snarl left his lips before he could stop it, his other senses going into overdrive as everything began to twitch. His ears, his nose, his--his--

He whirled in a circle, paws slipping on the grass as he caught sight of a long black--A whimper of disbelief sounding in his ears as he stared at--at--

A Tail. 

He. Had. A. TAIL. 

It was nothing like the one he’d tried to create before. Of course he’d known that. But still. It was--it was moving and he wasn’t sure if he was controlling it or not and he couldn’t get it to stop moving and with his ears twitching at every sound demanding to know what that noise was and his nose twitching as it filled with smells that were both familiar and yet totally unfamiliar at the same time that demanded he needed to investigate so he could figure out just what he was sensing and--he--he---

It was too much.

All that preparation had been for nothing. It was like that nightmare of walking into a final and realizing you hadn’t studied for it at all. He couldn’t do this! This was--

“Whoa, Lo. It’s okay. Breathe, Buddy. You’re okay. You’re doing great.” 

Logan shuddered at how his ears flicked towards the voice and away, another soft whine leaving him as he looked up to Roman.

Roman, who’s eyes were glowing as bright gold as any wolf’s in the moonlight as he stood tall, head held high, staring him down, one hand outstretched in a pacifying gesture despite the display of dominance. “You’re okay, Lo.” He said in a low voice, maintaining eye contact, his breath steady despite how quickly Logan could hear his heart beating. 

Because he doesn’t know if you’re a threat. 

And Roman had been trained to kill threats.

Logan lowered his head, ears laying back as he found himself reacting to instinct, crouching down so that his belly brushed the ground, to appear as small as possible in this...this shape. 

The golden light in Roman’s eyes softened as he took a careful step closer.

It took all that he had to stay in place, to not retreat against Ro’s advancement. Not that Logan was confident he could run at this point. As uncoordinated and off kilter as he felt he’d probably end up face planting into the ground after two steps.

Another whine left his throat as Roman crouched within lunging distance, his hand still outstretched. 

“I know it’s a lot to take in.” He said with a faint smile. “A lot to get used to. But I know you can handle this, Brainiac. You’re gonna be just fine. I know you won’t hurt me.” 

Such Trust. 

Such trust for a high school enemy.

And yet---Logan found himself cautiously creeping forward, belly still to the ground as he stretched out his head, instinctively sniffing Roman’s proffered hand. 

His ears perked as he tried to place the multitude of scents he found there, far more than should have been on a human’s hands. It was intriguing. So much he could sense with a bare sniff and yet he couldn’t place those smells. It was--He licked Roman’s fingers to get a better idea of just what was on--

Wait. 

Logan recoiled, mouth feeling like it was on fire as he gagged, his tail twisting down to hide between his legs. Had he seriously just licked Roman’s hand?! 

Laughter rang through the air as Roman reached out, scratching Logan’s ears with warm fingers. “Do I taste that bad?” 

He stiffened under the touch, his chest rumbling with a suppressed growl of disagreement. No. He hadn’t tasted...unpleasant. Just the fact that Logan had licked him in the first place was...disquieting. 

He closed his eyes, leaning into Roman’s warm hand. He’d been so focused on having the tail that he’d overlooked all other canine behavior he could exhibit with these...extra senses in this unfamiliar shape. 

 Roman huffed, dragging his fingers down to scritch underneath Logan’s chin before pulling back. “You’re overthinking this.”

His ears laid back, eyes flashing open to glare at him. What did Roman expect? Him to be a crazy rabid feral--he flinched, remembering too late just why he had Roman bring a gun out here. 

Because he should be feral. Wild. Aggressive. He was a freaking wolf now. And while he was thankfully thinking more human at the moment, unlike the mindless beast he’d feared he’d become, he was still in a wolf’s body until the moon set and he had no idea how was he supposed to figure this out on his own--

Roman exhaled, shaking his head, his eyes glowing a brighter gold in the darkness as he slipped his gun, still in its holster, from around his waist, tossing it into a nearby bush before Logan could react. “Instinct, Lo.” 

Logan stiffened, looking between the bush and his childhood friend before taking a cautious step away from where the gun had fallen. What was he doing?! That was Ro’s only protection against--

Roman’s heart rate slowed as he pulled his own shirt over his head, tossing it to the side as he stared Logan down with a half smile. “The wolf won’t remain tethered beneath the human forever. They’re equals within you now. You just have to take a breath. Relax. And--” He rippled like a mirage on a hot summer day before a wolf with reddish brown fur stepped forward to rub his head against Logan’s. ~Trust yourself.~

To Be Continued

Jane and the Wolf

Word Count: 3,191 Jane x OC Part One Warnings: Jane is aged up. Fluff

It was about six months after Demetri met his mate Lily Cullen that preparations to change her were put into action. Jane had offered to be in the room when Demetri turned Lily just in case she was needed as she would be able to subdue him with her gift. Demetri had expected Lily to want to remain human a little longer; maybe even have a baby with him like Bella did with Edward, so he was surprised by her answer when he approached the subject one afternoon.

“Lily can we talk about the future…our future?” “Of course Dem, what did you want to discuss?” She asked in response “I-I wanted to discuss the topic of children with you” He began, feeling a little nervous “Did you want children before you are turned?” Lily thought for a moment before answering him “I have thought about this a little since we got together and as much as I love you and would love to have a family with you, I just don’t know if I want to take that risk. What if something went wrong? You’d be left all alone forever and wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt; if you were the reason something happened to me” She paused and took his hand in hers “I thought we could have a family another way…we could do what my parents did. We could adopt a child; I mean there are lots of children out there that need a home and we can offer that and I’m proof that a human child can be raised by and around vampires” She added and saw he was smiling at her “Wow. That was not the response I was expecting…but I am totally on board with your suggestion Lils” He replied and leaned in to place a kiss on her lips “Are you sure Dem? I feel like I’m taking away your chance to be a dad…to have a child of your own” She said looking into his eyes, trying to read him “I would be lying if I said I haven’t imagined a little me or you running around the castle but…” He held her hand a little tighter when he felt her try and remove hers from his “I would rather have you by my side forever and give a child a home that needs one, than take the risk of losing you. As you said what if something went wrong? There are no guarantees that you will survive having my baby and I don’t wish to risk your life…not when we have another option available. I love you Lily” He pressed his lips to hers again “Always” “I love you too Dem” She wrapped her arms around him.

Jane stood by the door of Demetri and Lily’s shared room as he leant down to bite her, to change her and was pleased that she didn’t need to step in and subdue him “I’ll keep you company for a bit Demetri” She said as she took a seat on the sofa “Thank you Jane for today and for your company” “I had every faith in you and your self-control Demetri…it was merely a precaution…just in case” She replied smiling “Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing Lily as a newborn. It was nice of the masters to allow her to spend her newborn phase here” “Caius didn’t want her going home and following the vegetarian diet, only for her to return in a year or two and have to change to our diet” Demetri answered, “That and Lily asked for permission to spend her newborn year here…with me” He added “Really? She didn’t want to go back to Forks?” Jane asked sounding a little surprised “No, she told them that she wanted me to change her and that means that I have to take responsibility for her; to be one to teach her how to survive in this life and I cannot do that we are half a world apart” “Wow” Jane breathed, nodding “I bet that made you feel good knowing she wanted it to be your venom running through her and not her father’s” “It did actually…I wanted to be the one to change her but didn’t know if she’d want that kind of bond with me…” He trailed off “Why wouldn’t she? She’s your mate” “Exactly Jane. We’re mates…changing her means I become her sire; her creator…it would change things between us…” “It would only strengthen your mate bond” Jane cut him off smiling. “That’s another thing” He said chuckling “She also told them that as we’re mates, she couldn’t and wouldn’t spend that amount of time away from me. She looked right at Marcus at that moment and I knew then she had won his vote” “Clever girl” Jane praised looking over at Lily with a smile “I think Caius agreed because he likes having Lily around and is curious to see whether she’ll be the one Cullen who doesn’t follow the vegetarian diet” Demetri said “That sounds like Caius” Jane laughed “I bet Aro agreed because he likes the idea of Lily ‘belonging’ to his family” Jane added smiling “Not to mention it links his family to Carlisle’s forever too” Demetri added.

Demetri took Lily hunting for animals in the Tuscan countryside and showed her what she needed to do “Well done Lils. Are you still thirsty?” “I am but…” “But what?” He cut her off “I’m not liking the taste of animal blood” She answered and he chuckled “Ok, but can you do me a favour please Lils?” She nodded “Please try again, maybe try a different animal” Lily agreed “Can I ask why this is important to you Dem?” “I just want you to try the vegetarian diet, it’s what Carlisle would have wanted. However, if you don’t like it and want to follow the traditional diet then you can. I will support you either way” “Thank you Dem. I love you.” “I love you too.”

Lily had tried the vegetarian diet but she found the taste of animal blood unpleasant and that she was thirsty all of the time. The smell of human blood appealed to her much more and she spoke to Demetri about her concerns when she was tempted to kill her friend Gianna; the Volturi’s secretary, so it was agreed that she would follow the diet of the Volturi “You owe me €50 Brother” Caius said to Aro “Fine” He replied handing over the money “I cannot believe you two had a bet on what diet Lily would follow” Marcus said as he looked at his brothers “Oh come on brother, like you were not curious about Lily’s diet choice” Caius replied, Marcus shrugged “I mean Demetri even went to the trouble of asking our permission to teach her to hunt animals so she could honour her family’s lifestyle choice and yet her true nature prevailed” Caius added sounding proud, if not a little smug.

Lily was displaying a level of self-control that newborns do not normally show and the Kings were impressed and pleased that their faith in her and Demetri’s ability to handle a newborn had paid off. Felix had offered to help with fight / combat training as he is the strongest vampire and would be the one less likely to get hurt by her newborn strength.

Lily had been a newborn for six months when Demetri, Lily, Felix and the twins went to Forks to visit Lily’s family. Carlisle had contacted Aro and advised him that he wanted the packs to meet Lily now she had been turned, especially as the treaty now applied to her and Demetri. Aro agreed and thought it may help Lily to get a change of scenery and wanted to know how she would handle being around humans or more specifically Renesmee.

Two days after they arrived in Forks Jake came over to the Cullen’s for a visit and bought over the pack’s three newest members to meet the Cullens; to get them used to their scent and vice versa. As soon as the wolves entered the house Jane recognised Jake’s scent from the battlefield, she then noticed the scent of ‘mint and cedarwood’ followed by the unpleasant smell of two other wolves. The wolves entered the family room and as soon as Sebastian looked at Jane he imprinted on her; he knew then he had found his mate and was shocked to discover that his mate was a vampire; their sworn enemy. The only silver-lining in this strange situation was that the pack could never harm her, she would be protected by him and the packs always. Jake and the other two wolves growled the second he imprinted on Jane due to the pack’s telepathy; they turned to glare at her and they growled again, almost like they were trying to intimidate her.

Meanwhile, Jane felt something inside her click into place the moment their eyes met and she knew she was looking at her mate but wasn’t happy to discover that after waiting over 1000 years to meet him, he was a shapeshifter; a wolf no less. However, she couldn’t help feeling drawn to him, the need to be near him, to protect him. Edward choked back a laugh after hearing her thoughts which led to her glare at him “Stay out of my head, or else” She growled low. “What’s wrong sister?” Alec asked placing a hand on her shoulder “I er…I found my mate” Jane answered low looking at Sebastian. Felix sniggered “Ha-Jane’s mated to a wolf. Caius is going to love that” Felix said nudging Demetri in the side “Felix. Not now” Demetri warned, Felix raised an eyebrow at him but said nothing more.

“Jacob, please can you introduce Jane to your friend?” Carlisle asked, Jake nodded “Jane this is Sebastian. Sebastian this is Jane, she is a member of the Volturi” “It’s nice to meet you Jane” Sebastian said with a smile “Likewise” Jane answered, a small smile tugging at her lips. The tension in the room was so thick you could it with a knife.

“If you hurt her in any way, I will have Demetri and Felix hold you down whilst I neuter you and I won’t use my gift to take away your senses” Alec said straight-faced to his sister’s mate, Sebastian, who didn’t react.

“You never say stuff like that for me babe” “Lily” Edward scolded her “I’d kill anyone who hurt you mi amore. You may not be aware, but I did threaten our guards with dismemberment and the dungeons if they hurt you when you came to stay at Christmas when we first met” Demetri said looking into Lily’s ruby eyes “Aww babe...you’re the best” Lily replied before kissing him “Don’t you forget it” Demetri smirked at her; his arms wrapping around her waist, Carlisle and Esme choke back a laugh at their behaviour. Edward rolled his eyes, still not pleased that his sister was mated to Demetri. “Edward, Demetri and I are mates so you better get used to it because he is a member of this family now and we protect our family” Lily said looking at her brother, Demetri tightened his hold on Lily’s waist.

“Maybe the two of you would like to take a walk, maybe get to know each other a little…away from everyone” Esme offered softly, looking at Jane and Sebastian who nodded “Shall we Jane?” He asked softly, she hesitated for a few moments then stepped forward and making her way out of the house, Sebastian following behind her. They walked away from the house until they were far enough away that they could not be heard, ensuring not to cross the treaty line and being careful to not expose Jane to any humans.

The air between Jane and Sebastian was awkward as neither of them were initially pleased with the thought of being mates as their kind have been sworn enemies for generations, although Sebastian did point out to her that he was not a child of the moon; he was a shapeshifter and can transform whenever he likes. “I would like to apologise Jane for the behaviour of Jake, Liam and Riley; they had no right to growl at you like that, I have no choice over who I imprint on and they know that. Jacob knows that better than anyone” Sebastian said looking into Jane’s ruby eyes “Th-thank you Sebastian, although it-it is not you who should apologise” She replied “However, that said my brother should not have threatened you and I can assure you he will not harm you in anyway, not ever” She added looking into his blue eyes “Thank you Jane, although I did find his threat of ‘neutering’ me slightly amusing” He chuckled and Jane couldn’t help the slight giggle that passed her lips. “I would like to ask you one thing if I may?” He asked and she nodded “Felix mentioned Caius would love that you are mated to a wolf. What did he mean by that as I’m guessing he was being sarcastic?” “Er…yes he was. Caius is one of the three Kings that rule the vampire world and he hates werewolves; more specifically children of the moon. He made it his mission to eradicate them from existence” She replied low, no longer looking into his eyes “I see. I am aware that your family has seen the pack before during the day during the confrontation involving Renesmee, so he must realise that we are not children of the moon” He responded “He does but I feel he will be the one King that will oppose this ‘union’ the most. He will take some convincing I am sure” She said looking up at him “I understand this will be difficult initially, but I am prepared to make this work Jane, no matter the obstacles”

He took her small cold hand in his larger warm one “Just so you are aware as the imprint, you decide the nature of this relationship…” He cut him himself off when he noticed the confused look on Jane’s face “Although imprinting is the way we find our mates, it doesn’t always have to be the case. As the imprint you decide if you want us to be friends or mates. If you tell me you see me as nothing more than a brother or a protector then I will honour that decision, even if it will be hard to do so at first. You will always be my top priority Jane; you will always come first…even before the pack” He said softly and gently placed his hand on her cheek, she leaned into his touch slightly “I have a brother, I do not wish for another. You are my mate Sebastian, and that means I will protect you always” She replied, her hand coming rest on top of his “I will protect you always too. I would very much like to be your friend as well as your mate Jane” “I don’t really have many friends, but… I think friends is a good place to start…the rest will fall into place I’m sure” She replied and he couldn’t help smiling down at her ‘she doesn’t seem as scary as Jacob made out’ he thought to himself. If only he knew.

“How will this work? I mean I am immortal and you…you are not?” Jane asked curiously “I am immortal too…kind of…” He replied and she raised an eyebrow at him “Once we start phasing we stop aging, so as I long as I phase regularly I will not age…therefore essentially being immortal like you” He replied and she nodded “I could turn you later down the line…if you wanted?” She offered “I’m afraid not Jane, vampire venom is toxic to us, it would kill me not preserve me” He replied “Oh, I’m sorry I had no idea. Thank you for letting me know…I now know that I am unable to mark you as mine” “I’m sure we can figure something out…if that is something your kind do once you find your mate” He replied “Will the pack accept me or will it be…difficult?” “They will have to accept you, protect you. The treaty we have the Cullens will apply to you now too…you will also be able to come onto our land as you are my mate. Although things may take a little time to settle down” He answered her “I understand…this isn’t going to be easy for either of our families to accept.”

Sebastian and Jane took it turns to ask one another some questions to get to know one another a little better “My favourite colour is grey/silver. What’s yours Sebastian?” She asked “I like green. My favourite animal is a chimpanzee, you?” He replied “I like horses. Can I ask how old are you?” “I’m 18 years old and you?” He asked “I’m 17…physically, but I have been around for about 1000 years” She replied watching him for his reaction “Wow. Well may I say I think you have aged beautifully” He smiled at her; she looked down taking her bottom lip between her teeth, if she could have blushed she would have. He chuckled low. “What hobbies / interests do you have?” He asked “I like to read; I have quite a few books not to mention the castle has a huge library. I collect china dolls…I have quite the collection. I spend a lot of time with Alec and since she moved into the castle I have become friends with Lily, Demetri’s mate. What about you?” “I hang out with the pack and train with them. I like swimming and soccer and spending time at the beach. I enjoy reading although I probably do not own as many books as you” He responded. “What do you like to do for fun?” He asked “Fun? Er I like shopping. Does practising my gift on Felix when he annoys me count?” She asked “Er…possibly” He answered sounding unsure “I do not know what your gift is…not really” “I am able to cause people excruciating pain that incapacitates them instantly, just by looking at them. It only works on one person at time and I must be able to see them. I am able to make the pain seem mild and turn the level of pain up as and when I want” She answered honestly “Huh…remind me not to piss you off then” He answered her “I would never use my gift on you Sebastian…you are my mate and to hurt you would be to hurt myself” She was making him a promise and he nodded “Thank you, that’s good to know.”

Jane was feeling conflicted about everything as she was still a little annoyed with fate for giving her a shapeshifter for a soulmate but she knew she couldn’t stay away from him; the mate pull was there and she couldn’t deny it…she didn’t want to deny it, she just hoped he meant it when he said he wanted to make this work no matter the obstacle.

Today's post is not on the usual "writer blog fare" side. Instead I am going to introduce you to several fun facts about various animals on our planet and then talk about worldbuilding.

1. Lampreys are a kind of "living fossil"- a not-really-so-scientific term for a creature that has lived unchanged for a very long time, so long that we have fossils of them looking the same way they do now. They don't have proper jaws, just a circular sucking mouth with teeth set into it and a tongue designed to strip flesh off of what it touches. They're finless fish, look quite a bit like eels, and have this really alien, uncanny vibe to them.

[id: a long, slender bluish-silver lamprey sitting among rocks. It has a long snout, an eye, and then six small perforations in its side arranged at an even interval sitting behind the eye. The environment it is sitting in is very yellow and green in comparison. end id]

[id: an image of a lamprey from below. The snout ends in a round, flat mouth which is studded with teeth in four concentric circles. The teeth are smallest near the outer edge and largest in the middle, and look like very sharp round points. In the center of this ring is another, smaller circle, where the pointed, tooth-like tongue can be seen, as well as a hole for the lamprey to actually ingest food with. Its eye is visible, as are some of the perforations on its side. This one is a more mottled gray than the first one was, and less shiny. end id]

Sea lampreys, which are the kind i've sort of not really kinda researched, are a major pest in the Great Lakes, where they regularly attack fish. They can get up to two feet in length. Despite this, they are not particularly dangerous towards humans.

2. Horseshoe crabs are also "living fossils." They've been around and virtually unchanged for millions of years. They're not true crabs, and are more closely related to chelicerata species, like spiders and scorpions (and many more). There are a lot of cool features of horseshoe crabs, but one of their most extremely cool, to me, is their blood.

I'm not going to post any images of what I consider to be animal cruelty, so you'll have to take me at my word here, but this is a bottle of horseshoe crab blood. If you're sensitive to images of animal cruelty, I don't recommend looking for proof, but if you aren't, there are plenty of images of the blood coming out of the creature for you to verify this with.

E[id: a bottle of slightly frothy, opaque blue liquid. It is sitting in a row with several other bottles of the same material. end id]

I am a sucker for blue blood, I just think it's neat, so that's all I'd need as an excuse to slam some horseshoe-crab-inspired nonsense in my exceptionally gory and fucked up wips, and if you've been reading along with WiB you may have noticed that blue blood does come into play at some point! But that's not all that's neat about horseshoe crab blood. Unfortunately for the horseshoe crabs, but fortunately for us, their blood is literally the only source of an important compound used for detecting the presence of dangerous bacteria in certain pharmaceutical drugs. (Fortunately, there are replacements that will hopefully become more popular in coming years.)

Now that we've gone over all that, onto the worldbuilding!

I worldbuild by Rule of Cool. Let's just get that out of the way. Every so often people will ask me how my worlds get so expansive (not WiB, WiB i made up on the fly by cribbing from fanfic and like... BBC Merlin. Assume very little of this holds true for WiB) and the answer is largely that I take every interest I have ever had in anything and smash it all together and throw it at my wip to see what sticks. and then I just... like... reasonably attempt to figure out what the natural conclusions will be.

So: we have lampreys. We have blue-blooded ancient sea creatures with spectacularly important and valueable blood. We are writing this into a story that takes place on land, somehow.

- The first option, and the one I'm going to talk about most because I did it, is just to rule-of-cool it into a character. (Or a place, or an item, or whatever, but largely I do rule-of-cool on living creatures and think harder about the world around them.) If you've been keeping up with WiB, you may have noticed that (spoilers) Zero Point is some kind of fucked up magician with a lamprey mouth in their hand who shapeshifts and bleeds blue. This is where I got those inspirations from (along with, like, some other stuff. I promise there are no lamprey assassins, but- continuing in the trend of stealing from sea creatures- the bobbin worm is a spectacularly beautiful, spectacularly deadly creature if you're within its weight range. which is like, goldfish size, but. And cuttlefish are known to disguise themselves as other animals, and can change sexes if the male:female ratio where they are isn't ideal.)

So you can take the elements you like, and just kind of slam them together haphazardly, which is what I did with Zero Point. The trick to this kind of worldbuilding is just to avoid looking too closely at it. The magical assassin has a fucked up mouth in their hand? Yeah, okay, that seems kind of fucked up and creepy. What do they do at all times? They hide it under a glove. So the protags Just Straight Up Never Ask. And voila; it never gets explained, and it never has to.

Same with the blue blood. It shows up, it functions as a plot device because only Zero Point has blue blood; it is never explained or even delved into with much detail. And if it were, it would fall apart instantly, because the justification is literally just "i thought it was neat. No, no one else is like that. I don't even know why they are. i just felt like it"

- The second option is to consider the effects of the things that you're working with, and then work off of that.

Let's take Zero Point again. Strip them of their context (weird assassin with magical powers) and just like, consider the fact that this is a creature with blood that regularly retails for over $10,000 USD, is intelligent as fuck, shapeshifts, has a mouth in their hand that may or may not be their actual mouth, and can exist on land so long as they have suitable access to water. What does that mean for our setting? Surely they're not the only person like that; so you have a whole species of people who are sort of but not really amphibious, shapeshift, and maybe have magical powers, who knows. They can't shapeshift their fucked up lamprey mouths, maybe. That seems like a reasonable limit. So their blood is highly valuable- what does that mean for their relations with other people, or their culture? What kind of foods do they eat? How do they create a sense of culture as shapeshifters; is there even a way that they represent themselves in art? How do they interact with the world? Do they have a "true form" or not? Every one of these questions will spawn new questions. If you answer all of them you'll lose your mind, but if you answer at least ten you'll spawn a much more background-heavy world that can help to shape your story much more effectively than trying to just craft a narrative will. Sometimes it works very well for a story. Sometimes it gets you lost in the weeds.

- The third option is to reference something else, and build off that. Again, let's use Zero Point as the example.

In the original story that the WiB ensemble is from, Closerverse, which may have some mentions on this blog but honestly I have no idea, there is a city that I've done quite a bit of worldbuilding on. This city is called Hudson, and one of the major important features of it is that it is partially underground. (This is a reference to the DFZ of Rachel Aaron's Heartstrikers series). Hudson is intentionally run to be the worst, most unpleasant city in the world, and one of its features are its wildly intelligent, dangerous forms of aquatic life. The lowest level of this city is partially submerged, and all of these creatures plague the people who live down there.

Closerverse was also set during a period of early industrialization, and Hudson heavily referenced US history, especially 1900s-1920s labor history. Tenements, pollution, zero protections for workers, et cetera. Hudson is a nasty, miserable place, and everyone who lives there can feel the jaws closing in on them.

Anyway, in Closerverse you got these fucked up massive eel-like creatures (lampreys, but with extra features) that due to some rather significant meddling wound up growing legs and then got really massive and started eating people. They have blue blood, glow in the dark, and make fairly decent eating as long as they aren't eating you. And they're intelligent. Given the whole "mutual eating each other" thing, the eels and the people of Hudson have some pretty major animosity going on.

Most of Zero Point's stuff is really just me referencing the Hudson Eels, because I fucking love those. They're some of my favorite worldbuilding elements ever. But given that no one else in WiB has ever seen a Hudson Eel, let alone seen their blood get dry on things, or whatever, everything about Zero Point is wildly out of context. And that almost makes it better, because the whole deal with them is that they're mysterious and weird, and having them be a mysterious and weird reference to something no one but I know about most likely is like, fun and neat.

There are, of course, other modes of worldbuilding as well, but I typically aim to stick to the first two as much as possible. The cooler you make something, the more possible questions it raises; the more questions something raises, the deeper your world gets.

Although, a word of advice: sometimes animals just do things. Sometimes bodies just have features. Who would invent fingernails? But having them is mighty convenient, isn't it? For that matter, who would come up with a deeply logical and reasoned explanation for eyebrows- but not having those would be very strange, to us. You can get away with doing a lot by just having that be how it is, and not having the characters comment on it.

Also, the more "shaped" a thing should be, the more you'll want to take the second approach. For house design, something intentionally built, you'll want to know why it was built, and what purpose is this and that room, and why is it painted such and such colors. But if you're talking about adding a second moon, like... fuck dude, who needs to know why there's a second moon? Maybe if you have sailors you have to know what it'll do to your oceans, but that's the kind of thing you can kind of just say exists and move on. You'll figure it out; it gets pretty intuitive.

Anyway, happy worldbuilding!

Meltdown

I DIDN’T EXPECT TO HAVE THIS DONE TONIGHT BUT HERE! But fair warning, I don’t know if this counts as body horror but there’s still some kind of disturbing imagery involving shapeshifting going wrong and comparisons to a person melting. I worried about this being excessive but I warned you!

I just felt like making angst for Nagi to be perfectly honest and showing more of the drawbacks of her big power.

Here you go!

Nagi had lived long enough with her ability to shapeshift to be able to recognize the signs of an oncoming meltdown. When her power was stretched to its absolute limit and its response was to essentially kick itself into overdrive until her body couldn’t take the strain. Her usually cool skin would gain an unpleasant heat that itched before it evolved to what felt like flames on her flesh, her vision would begin to blur as her eyes struggled to keep a solid form, and movements became sluggish, uncoordinated, and incomprehensible.

If she were to compare her shifting to her body becoming clay, then a meltdown was like she was melting. It was not a pretty sight.

Just her luck that Nagi could feel the heat spreading throughout her being when surrounded by those she wouldn’t hesitate to call her family. 

It was the aftermath of another fight with the Demon Bull King’s forces and she supposed that her superfluous transformations to escape the enemy’s notice while sabotaging them underneath their notice were to blame. She had felt fine as they all celebrated, everything was fine. Until she made one last shift for the day, taking the form of MK to poke fun at the young man’s attempts to look cool during the fight.

That was the straw which broke the camel’s back.

She froze in her tracks as an unhealthy flush came to her borrowed face, shivers running her frame despite the fever and if she was capable of sweating, Nagi was sure she’d be sweating buckets.

“Please, not now,” she whimpered to herself, struggling to keep sight of the others as her sight began to give way. Her hair began to droop from MK’s gravity defying spikes and legs started to feel limp, as if her very bones were beginning to soften into liquid. The sounds of her panicked wheezes quickly got the others attention, her chest being stabbed with guilt at the sight of their looks of concern.

“Nagi, are you okay?” Sandy asked, reaching towards the demon to see if she had gotten injured during the battle. Only for his hand to sink into Nagi’s shoulder. And when he pulled away in shock, some of it stuck to his hand to form a goopy bridge between the two which drooped lazily before falling to the ground. Nagi sluggishly watched, drops of what she was pretty sure wasn’t sweat beginning to trail down her face. It only faintly registered to her ears that MK and Mei were now screaming in horror while Pigsy and Tang seemed to be struggling to contain their nausea.

“Sorry Sandy… I overdid it. Now I’m… melting,” She hissed, struggling to translate her racing thoughts when her lips felt like molasses much like the rest of her. Nagi didn’t even notice as her hair continued to droop downwards, not so much as growing in length but dripping down like candle wax. “But it’s okay… this happens. Not dying. Things will just get… messy.” Her hair was now a menagerie of different colors that seemed to be constantly shifting in no set pattern.

“Messy how? Is there anything we can do to help you?” Tang asked, feeling helpless as he watched Nagi’s clothes melt into a bizarre fusion of his robes, Mei’s biking suit, and Princess Iron Fan’s dress. The sleeves of her clothes obscured her hands but with the way they seemed to move, Tang knew it wouldn’t be a leap to assume that the sleeves had become her hands. She gave a slow shake of her head, giving a wince as familiar bull horns sprouted from the sides of her head in response. A strangled groan of pain left her lips as a metal plate covered her chin and circled her eyes.

“Can’t stop shifting. Keep changing. Hurts. Melting. Pass out. Can’t do anything. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!” Nagi screeched, flipping from lethargic to hysterical fast enough to cause whiplash. 

It was then that her body went from passively melting to actively lashing out.

Her hair, now more in the form of tendrils, shot out wildly to grab at anything within their reach whether it be people or objects. Everyone quickly dodged or ran away as fast as they could to avoid the flailing hair coils. Nagi clutched her head in pain as her hair began to wreak havoc, pulling light posts out of the ground, throwing around vehicles, nothing was safe.

Mei was thankful that she at least had a bladed weapon to cut away at the hair before it got too close to her.

MK did not have that luxury however, if the sight of him being tossed into a nearby alley said anything. With one last slash, she took off after her best friend in hopes that he was okay. Thankfully he was, though a bit banged up. Mei quickly helped him back up on his feet, keeping an eye on the alley entrance.

“Thanks Mei, didn’t expect to be thrown that hard. Definitely gonna be feeling that for a couple days,” he said before his eyes caught sight of Nagi further up the street. She was struggling not to buckle down under the weight of her hair which seemed to have tripled in length and continued to spread chaos further. She looked to be in a daze as tears fell down her face that looked more like a cracked, waxy mask than anything else.

“I got an idea. It’s stupid, reckless, and likely to get us killed if it doesn’t work. You in?” Mei gave him a look that screamed ‘bruh are you an idiot?’ as she readied her sword.

“Dude, that’s the basis of our entire friendship, of course I’m in.”

MK didn’t know what he did to deserve a friend like Mei, but he wasn’t going to question the good things in his weird as hell life.

“Alright then, follow my lead!” And with that, MK took off running towards Nagi with Mei right behind him. Any hair coils which got close to them were cut down by Mei while MK dodged and weaved his way through. Nagi snapped out of her daze as they were upon her, fear in her eyes at the sight of their weapons. Her entire being flinched as she shut her eyes, as if prepared to be struck down like all the other demons they’ve faced.

Instead of the sting of steel, she felt herself get wrapped into a tight hug that made her ribs creak in distress. Slowly opening her eyes, Nagi saw MK and Mei squeezing her with enough strength that she wouldn’t be able to pry them off if she tried. They didn’t even seem to care that they were starting to sink into her from the force they were using.

Nagi’s shock caused her hair to finally stop its havoc, now frozen in place.

“I’m… sorry. Please. Don’t leave,” She was able to mumble, despite her lips halfway fused together from melting. Her pleading eyes were enough to get her point across.

“It’s okay Nagi, none of us are going anywhere,” Mei said, freeing one arm to give the demon a reassuring pat on the cheek. 

“Tired. Need rest. Back to normal then. Knock me out.”

Mei and MK shared a look before the latter pulled out his staff with a questioning look. Nagi gave a sluggish nod and braced herself the best she could, shutting her eyes to not see the staff swing towards her head.

Pigsy, Tang, and Sandy winced as the heart stopping clang of metal rang throughout the city block before a soft thud followed behind. MK’s face was filled with regret as Nagi’s unconscious body fell to the ground before letting out a sigh of relief as her body seemed to cease melting at least and all the hair coils dropped not far after her. She remained a disturbing mishmash of the features of his friends and enemies that would haunt his nightmares alongside everything else, but she was going to be okay.

It would be okay for now.

When she woke up afterwards?

Well they’d all just have to see.

The Full Moon (A White Demon’s Love Song, Part 7.)

Series description: A new job was the reason you found yourself on a lonely road trip on the western coast, ending up in the woods of the Olympian Peninsula. Yet a sudden car malfunction was what cause your unplanned stay in Forks. To your surprise, there was a lot of sinister things going on under the veil of fog.

Part Summary: As the relationship between you and the grumpy shapeshifter finally moved on to the better ground, you knew you were now in the position to ask to see more of the magic that Quilete people could do.

A/N: Okay, okay, okay. I'm back and... Let's get this bad boy running, shall we?

Tagging: @missdictatorme​

Word count: 4.6 K

Twilight playlist: ✨ Twilight Crackheads ✨

Series masterlist: H E R E

Jacob sat there in dead silence for a moment, before he looked back at you, just sitting there, chewing the meat and staring at him with a small smile. - "Are you sure that you're in the right headspace? We can talk about this later if you want." - At that, you furrowed. You've asked him to show you the wolf again. Okay, maybe, you've been making a fairground attraction out of his abilities and you weren't afraid to tell it out loud, but you wanted to see the animal again. You were curious about seeing it. - "What are you after?" - You mumbled, taking another bite from your almost cold meal. Dear Lord, you've been sitting at the table for more than half an hour. - "You've hit your head, had a panic attack, fainted twice, and even though, you want to see it again. Don't you have any sort of self-preservation instinct? Or do you just find it exciting to have your life threatened all the time?"

It was played out as a joke and you both grinned, you even let out a small laugh... But it was just reminding Jacob of her. How excited she was to discover the werewolves, that she was fond of learning more about them - more so, there was a short fascination phase. Funny, how things sometimes replayed the exact way it was before. - "Hey, look at it from my perspective. I've been living my whole life listening to fairytales and legends, myths, stories... And now, I've learned that some of them are real. Of course, I want to see it again." - "It's not a magic trick. It's who I am, Y/N." - Jacob looked you dead in the eyes to scare you off a bit, but it hadn't made you even flinch. - "And I do respect that, Jacob." - It was just a whisper, but the five words meant a whole lot.

You were telling him that you're respecting this side of him and that you're not scared anymore. Well, that you're not scared of him, more so - which was fair, there was something way more malicious to be scared of. The cold ones, knowns also as the fricking vam-pi-res which you still couldn't say out loud. And now, it was your conflict as well, whether you wanted to take part in it or not. You were there and you should accommodate real fast, or it's going to cost a lot more than a slight concussion, two faintings, and obviously, making yourself an idiot out of yourself in front of fucking everyone. Which made you furrow. - "How do you even know I fainted twice and that I was acting like an idiot? You weren't here - Seth was with me the whole time." - "It's going to get crazier than it already is... Do you want me to answer this one?" - Jacob furrowed and you nodded. - "Are you sure?" - He asked once more. Again, you nodded

Maybe you thought that you're going crazy, Jacob couldn't tell what was going through that head of yours. So far, it seemed that not that much was going on there. And so, he went for it. - "We can see, hear, and feel our thoughts. The members of the pack a 24/7 access to every thought that has ever gone through your head, every feeling that went through... They can see everything. It's very uncomfortable and scary - but that's how I know what was happening here." - "Like all the time?" - "No, only when we shift and the person shifts around the same time." - Wow. How many boobies did the werewolves have to see? How much of the action... Did they see? Sex was the last appropriate thought in a situation like this one - but it was the most natural one.

Once more, your face was looking like a frozen Windows XP program as you thought about all the dirty secrets they knew about eating others... Well, there weren't any dirty secrets if they simply saw all of them, huh? That was one of the most fucked up things you've heard until that day. - "And can you like... Not share with them?" - You wondered after at least two-minutes-lasting silence. - "When you're good at playing mind games or you're a total asshole, constantly thinking about something unpleasant, theoretically, you can hide some of your memories... But trust me, we've been in each other's heads for enough of a long time. Mind games start to bore you to death after some time." - "But it's better than seeing someone bending Betty from the gas station over a table, ain't it? I'm sorry, but I can't stand the bare thought of seeing my friends... Doing stuff. Yuck." - At that, Jacob snickered - which fluidly translated to a burst of happy laughter. - "I'm talking years of being in each other's heads. Not just... Weeks or months. No matter how hard you'd try to conceal everything, there's always a small moment of vulnerability, which can tell others everything, especially when you imprint. Then you don't care about how the miserable singles perceive your all-day projection of a happy relationship." - Jacob mumbled then, his expression coldening at the end of his statement.

Again, there was this hint of sadness and the other Jacob taking over the wheel, steering the ship for now. Yet now, you were to jump straight into the sadness. - "Come again? Imprinting? And what's that about?" - You asked, reminding him that most of this is all news for you. You've never been inside the consciousness of the pack - you never saw Quil constantly gushing over his precious Claire, or before, you couldn't hear Sam thinking of Emily. At the start, it was sweet, but occasionally, it started to feel like flexing on the members who hadn't found the one yet. - "That's another form of slavery we, as the werewolves, participate in." - Jacob tried to joke around, but the tone of his voice gave him in. - "Okay, I'm ready to hear about that."

It wasn't making Jacob easy to talk about the imprinting, trying to explain it to someone - again. But he did. He talked about endless love where the wolf had no choice but to listen to the damn calling of his imprintee. He couldn't leave, he couldn't just stop loving them, the wolves had no choice in this matter. It was one of the most unfair and disgusting, weird things you've heard about that evening. But it made you think... Maybe this was why Jacob was so sour about Bella all the time. He imprinted - and she just let his trust go, becoming a vampire. She let him suffer, alone and unwanted. - "Did it..." - "No." - Jacob answered before you've even finished your question. So that wasn't what happened either - but you were positive that something similar to it had happened. The idea simply haunted you - how would it feel to fall for someone without choosing to do so? Without any reasoning?

On the other hand, it must've been extremely freeing. Not to think about doing right and wrong, just to do as your head tells you to - to love, admire and care for a person until the point it almost kills you, not to put yourself and your feelings in the first place... Damn. It had pros and cons. - "Okay." - You said when you've settled all the ideas inside your head. - "When we'll be doing it? I mean, when you're going to show me?" - Well, you certainly weren't fucking around. There was no question about IF Jake's going to show you, the question asked was starting with WHEN. On one hand, you've had the right to know more about it. On the other hand, it was none of your fucking business - especially with the vampires lurking around Forks.

And as usual for Jacob, he chooses the less logical solution. - "Tonight. I have a watch over the Ozette lake and I'm supposed to be alone there. Also, it's not probable for the leeches to track us out there." - Jacob was never the best with making good decisions, that was the first thing going on there. The second matter was that Jacob was sure you'd follow him into the woods - and if you'd drop dead again, Seth couldn't be the prince to rescue this time. The third thing about this situation was that it would be most likely the best solution, for a few days, to stick with one of the wolves. The trackers hadn't come across the few drops you've let in the forest when you banged your forehead into a damn root - they'd surely soon do so since it was quite smelly.

Now, when you were on board with everything, it also wasn't so crazy to ask you about borrowing a t-shirt from you. Sure, other boys and mainly Sam won't be too happy with how much did Jacob tell you - yet it was better than you walking around without having any clue. He could leave out some parts, for sure, but why would he do so? He was in a fucking shitty situation - no way in hell would he be pretending that everything on the planet is a-ok. - "Okay." - You chimed happily. Suddenly, you whipped folds with papers on the table, working as you ate the last crumpets on your plate. - "Also, there's this one problem." - "The money doesn't add up? " - Jacob asked back, his eyes glued to the TV. - "No, I'm just almost done with all the papers I was able to find there. You don't have the business for too long, do you?

At this, another bit of the conversation was started - Jacob told you how he got the old workshop from a mechanic who was too old to keep up. Of course, he paid something for the business, but it was more of a symbolic amount of money than a huge sum. Jacob also started to keep the record about all the gigs he has taken since he started to work as the new mechanic; yet despite his best tries, he was a messy person - your help was heavily appreciated in this field. This start-up was just what Jacob needed to leave La Push. He was still spending some time at the weekend in there with his dad, Seth, and his other friends, but now, he was trying to get through life on his own.

He dreamt about going on a vacation to somewhere where it's always sunny and warm, but he was still saving up for the dreamy trip of his life. Which, as you guessed, wasn't going too well. Jacob, being the good-willed idiot, was trying to help the needy people who couldn't afford to pay that much for a mechanic and there was a lot of small amounts of money he just... Let go. Just like with you, with Mrs. Peterson, and a ton of other people. So... He was most likely to spend his whole damn life in Forks. - "Yeah, but I mean... I will be done soon. What should I do when all the papers are sorted?" - You asked when the story was ended. - "Well, since you still have a debt, you might as well help me with the gigs, I suppose. Tomorrow, I have one in Sappho and then two cars in La Push, I think. And a routine check-up at the station... And then your car." - Jacob started to count on his fingers, naming every gig he had written into his calendar. - "I don't know anything about cars. And you've told me that you're gonna do something to me if I even get close to one of your cars. The cars don't like me either, just to let you know." - At that, Jacob laughed into the back of his palm. - "I'll be there and I'll show you your way around the cars, I swear. You won't be letting anyone's car blow up on my watch." - And there, it was the start of something so-called a friendship.

As Jacob promised, it could be around 8 p.m. as you both climbed into the tank he called a car. He made sure you've made yourself some hot tea and put it into a Thermo cup, some food, he so made you take your jacket and his raincoat just to be sure you won't feel cold. The whole ride to the unknown was quiet, yet in a nice way. You've been shifting on your seat expectedly, watching your surroundings. There were woods as far as you could see, nothing but deep and dark woods. Suddenly, Jacob turned off the engine and looked at you. You've been in the middle of literal nowhere, yet Jacob was sure you're just where you've been supposed to be. - "Well, come on, we're here." - The man smiled sadly. He was playing out the worst scenarios inside his mind for the last ten minutes and he was just praying you wouldn't fain when he'd show his wolf form to you. - "We'll be walking for half an hour," - "In this pitch-black night? Are you out of your mind?" - At that weak argument, Jacob snickered quite happily.

"I forgot you can't see that well in the dark." - The man scratched the nape of his neck as he looked around. - "But you'll be just fine, trust me. Let's go." - With a quite loud clap, he ventured to the forest head first, not waiting for what you wanted to do. Unexpectedly, you stood still at the trunk of his car while the wildest thoughts raced through your mind. That man told you, just mere hours ago, that there are vam-pi-res somewhere in the woods and now he wanted you to wander somewhere behind him, orienting only through the sounds of his heavy footsteps... Jacob was surely half-insane, you were one hundred percent sure of that. Suddenly, said crazy man popped his head on the other side of the trunk, making you squirm in fear. First, you ducked and tried to hide, but then, your mind clicked as your brain realized it's only Jacob

"Holy mother of shit." - The curse made Jacob grin, but he didn't say a single word as he leaned his elbows to the sides of the said trunk. - "I swear to God that I'll have a heart attack if you keep fucking around with me. You scared me to death."

"What are you so scared about? I've heard everyone looks better in the dark, Y/N, which makes me the best looking man in all of the Forks and La Push." - At that argument, a wide grin appeared on your face. Sure, you still were a bit tense, but as of now, Jacob's presence was calming you down... Which was a thing you thought you'd never say out loud. In the end, he was one grumpy and scary package. As of now, he was tall as a mountain and pretty well-built as far as you could judge; said man could also turn into a wolf at will, so it was a win-win situation. You had to be safe with him even if you didn't want to. - "Debatable." - It was not much more than a silent mumble when you answered Jacob. - "Come on. Don't be a sissy, nothing bad can happen to you. I can't smell anything inhuman in here. You're safe."

To be absolutely exact, Jacob couldn't smell anything other than you. Not that you'd be smelly or smelling funny, your smell was just outrageously strong, even in an opened, windy space. But he was sure that if any leech would be lurking around, he'd either see or smell them. - "Sissy?" - Was the answer you came up with, leaving the safe space behind the trunk. With never-before-seen confidence, you walked up to the edge of the woods, quite literally pulling your sleeves up in the process. - "You called me a sissy? Well, young man, you just outdo yourself. I'm no sissy." - And just like that, you stumbled to the pitch-black dark forest, walking a few steps forward between mossy, cold trees. At first, you still knew Jake's right behind to watch each of the steps you made, yet as the time passed by, the silence was growing louder and louder.

You've made it a few feet into the woods before you realized that you, in fact, were a total sissy. As you walked out of the edge again, you could now see Jacob resting his back on the side of his car, watching you with a small, daring smile. - "I gave you a minute before you walk back out. You impressed me with your time of a minute and fifteen seconds." - "Oh, fuck off. A forest is a freaky place when you can't see even a foot away from you. I almost hit a tree with my forehead." - With a sigh, you caught the straps of your backpack in your palms and looked at him. - "Well, lucky for you, I have a plan B."

First, you didn't know what he was doing - the man kneeled in front of you while showing you his back, waiting for you to do something. What you were supposed to do was in no way clear to you, to be honest. - "Are you climbing on it or not?" - Jacob asked impatiently after almost a minute of getting his knees wet. Were you doing... What? What did the man just ask you to do? To climb on his back? Well, who were you not to deliver?

With all the concentration you had in you and with the best skill you could have while wearing two thick jackets, you climbed on his back, making sure you were holding to his shoulders as firmly as you could. At first, it seemed to be working - with little to no actual force, Jacob walked at least half a mile with you on his back. The only problem was your ass slowly slipping down with each step he took. And suddenly...

"Oh, loca. Did you hurt yourself?" - As soon as Jacob heard a loud wet thud, he knew you've fallen directly on your ass. Yeah, it did hurt a little, but it was nothing you wouldn't walk off pretty easily. - "No, I think I'm good, it's basically nothing." - A mutter along with a sharp curse word left your lips as you tried to pick yourself hard. And you needed to say that it wasn't the easiest task when you couldn't see more than one and a half feet from you. Jacob watched you trying to find a tree nearby with a smirk on his face before he actually bowed down and made sure to pick you up bridal style.

"I can walk on my own, Jesus Christ, Black! I'm heavy!" - A quiet squirm hit Jacob's ears as he started running with you in his arms as if you were nothing but air. Even though you started to wiggle a bit to show you're not consenting to be carried, the man could hear your heart slowly calming down. Just like that, you felt very safe. - "We can talk about that once you start walking properly. You women really need to work on your marches, let me tell you that." - Jacob answered while making his way forward as if you weren't even there. - "It's hard to walk when you can't see for your dear life." - Was the last mutter you left out before curling up closer to the warmth he radiated as you tried to find a better position for yourself to relieve both him and you.

Jacob remembered the forest trail to lake Ozette from the back of his head. During the day, the place could be lovely when any leeches were around - it was a huge body of water laying as far as an eye could see, some shores were beachy, some of them were covered in reeds. When the summer was warm enough, it was one of Jake's favorite spots to take a swim at along with the boys, especially when they decided they are bored of cliff diving for now. As he thought about that, there were many beautiful spots around Washington the guides didn't talk about and which you definitely had to see for yourself - just like that one meadow high up in the mountains, or the canyon cutting the edge between Quileute and Cullen territory. There was just something simply magical about these spots.

It took him a moment to form the right kind of sentence before he started talking. Which, let's be honest, kinda freaked you out - the man was running around a pitch-black forest with you in his arms and nothing more than jean shorts and a plain t-shirt on, barefoot, let you add and he still found to breath to talk to you amidst all of that. - "You know, if we survive all of this in good health..." - Jacob started carefully. It was meant as a joke, but seeing your eyes widen in horror made him realize this wasn't funny to you. - "I mean, when all this is over, because, we will destroy those leeches and that's a promise, I think I have some secret spots for you that you might want to see." - "But... What about my car? Won't it be long repaired by then?" - Ouch. It was a good question, but it hurt the good-hearted Jacob right in the feels; this time, the mean, grumpy guy wasn't in charge.

Yes, he should focus on repairing your car as quickly as he was capable of just to get you out of Forks for good. As a reward, he wouldn't feel the heavy responsibility for another human being who was fully dependant on him and his pack in this scenario. On the other hand... - "What if we don't get the right parts, huh? I think you should start to prepare for prolonging your stay in Forks and by all means, you should find yourself a good part-time job. Newtons always look for a part-time worker." - Even if you could see just a sheer glimpse of his teeth, you knew he was basically smiling from ear to ear.

"Jacob Black, you're one of the best mechanics I've seen," - Wow. That was a huge compliment. Yet, then the second part of the sentence came to play and it ruined the nice thing completely. - "Truth is, I have seen like... One mechanic working. But you seem to be great at what you're doing and with your love for classic cars, there's no way in hell you wouldn't get my Beetle working." - "You meant do say the wreck, didn't you?" - "Oh, fuck you. No more compliments for you, you get cocky too easily." - To keep you in the headspace of winning that small quarrel, Jacob didn't say a word throughout the rest of the way. It wasn't much longer a mere five minutes later when something very bright hit your eyes.

Oh, it was the moon. It made sense - no clouds were in the sky, it was clear and you've also been miles away from the nearest small town. Here, as it reflected in the masses of water, the moon looked as big as never before. When Jacob put you down, you didn't wait for a signal that the proximity of Ozette if vam-pi-re free and just walked to the meadow surrounding it. As it was to be expected, it was cold as hell - there was a huge mass of water in front of you and the wind was blowing; yet your eyes were basically glued to the big, grey, shiny ball on the sky. - "I told you there are some secret spots you might enjoy." - Black grinned as he pressed something to your hand. At first, you just nodded with your mouth opened as you were unable to look away, yet as soon as you realized you're holding a piece of cloth, it hit you - Jacob walk walking back to the edge of the forest's edge, unzipping his jean shorts. It was happening.

With a soft thud, you took down your backpack and turned head first towards the spot the man disappeared at. Nothing more than a splashing of water and soft howling of the wind could be heard, yet you knew exactly what was happening. And when it happened, the sound reminded you of a quiet, strange explosion, you knew that this time, you've been perfectly prepared for what was waiting for you hidden just ten feet away from the nearest tree.

This time, when you saw it, you hadn't fainted. In fact, you stood perfectly still and watched the majestic animals slowly walking towards you.

Tiamat: Rise in Shadow p.2

Summary: He’s ended up in a new world, one that is surprisingly similar to his but everyone is so much younger. Tiamat, unable to resist his curiosity begins to observe, acting impulsively.

The Light realizes that they have problems concerning their operations

Tags: Violence, Gore

Tiamat's head was ringing, and it was damn annoying as well as slightly painful. It took a whole lot of effort and will to just open his eyes with his whole body screaming at him for the abuse. Not the first time, he told himself, had worse happen to him on Batman's watch. And then he realized there was a possibility he wasn't alone. His eyes shot open and he lifted his head enough to give the surrounding area a quick scan around before dropping back to the ground, face first of course. He felt as if he got kicked in the head by a horse, which was a close enough comparison given how hard he was hit. 

Fortunately it seemed like the Blight Hounds didn't seem to make it through or were dropped off elsewhere, hopefully somewhere far away, like a different dimension. He was about to seduce and kill a young man who would later become a gang leader as he'd been told by Oriviane, one of the oracles. Though it had nothing to do with Tiamat or the wraiths what his destiny would have been, his name was listed. He would die sooner or later.

It would have just been another night of ending someone's life with pleasure until they were suddenly ambushed by those damned monsters. Ambushes weren't all that unusual though it served to be a pain in the ass having to kill his targets before they ran off. Tiamat was always prepared for these moments and it wouldn't have been a problem if his psyche as well as his powers didn't decide to fluctuate right at that moment. It earned him a swat to the face from one of their malformed paws, and they were strong, if not smart.

“Damn, I hope they didn't scratch me,” Tiamat grunted, as his fingers came away wet with blood. 

He glanced at his surroundings, a thick but not unruly gathering of trees blocked much of Tiamat's field of vision like a forest, preventing him from seeing too much farther, but he could hear a the low drone of activity, human activity just beyond the edge of the spot where he stood. Tiamat followed the sounds, noting how oddly neat these trees were spaced almost as if...he reached the end to find wide open spaces filled with people either picnicking, strolling or playing, and beyond that was a city. Its buildings jutting up unpleasantly over the foliage. His portal navigation had landed him in the middle of a park in god knows where, again. In fairness, it was a stressful moment, trying to open up a door while fending of mutant mutts and no doubt, they must've been scattered over other realms. He really needed to get the hang of this before it sent him into somewhere much more unpleasant.

Strangely, as he kept passing through the thick growth of trees he could hear the sounds of civilization cars and voices, not too far away and as it turned out, he’d reached the edge of what turned out to be a reserved patch of forest. Now he was staring from under the shade, normal civilians passing by going about their business. At least he was sure he wasn’t on some god-forsaken hell. He was about to move forward when a sudden explosion erupted about fifty meters away. He flinched back into the cover and watched intently.

Through the throngs of screaming people, a figure emerged from the wreckage, large and imposing and an awfully familiar at that. It was Bane. Still duped up on Venom.

“Come out you spineless cowards, come out and face Bane!”

Good lord he was obnoxious as ever. Watching him thrash about like a child throwing a tantrum was almost comical. He took out a substantial chunk of the cement ground throwing it about, thankfully most of the crowds had retreated but he was posing a serious threat to bystanders. For now, it seemed that the only damage he was intent on doing was to the surrounding inanimate objects, smashing to be exact, unimpressive really. Then the drugged up criminal fixes his gaze on some unfortunate man on his way to work. Tiamat grinned. Perfect, he had some stress to work off.

Just when he had taken a step out, suddenly Bane was ambushed. Teenagers sporting colourful sets of powers and abilites. One of them, a green skinned boy morphed into a bull charging Bane relentlessly and recklessly. A young blond woman with a bow joined in, notching and releasing arrows effortlessly with near perfect aim. The flashy one dashed in to deliver a series of, flimsy punches. When it comes to Bane, nothing short of a strong punch will affect him, but somehow, Tiamat could feel that was merely to add to the distraction.

Something bigger was coming his way. 

Just as the thought materialized, a large black and blue jean mass came flying in, crashing into Bane with a loud thump and crack that definitely was the sound of a few broken bones. The villain was sent flying back from the impact while the recent addition to the fray watched with a triumphant expression, back straight, floating in the air with the symbol on his chest on display. A Super.

The sight of the S brought memories, slamming back into Tiamat .

“Hey Broody.”

Kon smiling as he hovered over him making terrible jokes about his height, his personality being not as colourful as his costume. Fighting together with their teammates against extraterrestrial terrorists. 

“You know he doesn’t mean that.”

Kon comforting him over his arguments and fights with Bruce and Jason. Hearing Kon’s voice beg him to come home again and again until he couldn’t hear him anymore. And when he finally opened his eyes, he was holding Kon’s head in his bloody hands.

Tim doubled over gagging, holding himself steady grasping a thorny vine that grew along the trunk of the tree, his hand so tight around it the thorns pierced skin and blood ran down his palm and the vine.

“Damn it, not now, keep it together...” he fought to keep the memories suppressed. Just then a giant crash spooked him out of the lapse and he looked up in time to see a huge Gorilla in a stupid hat flattening down everything In its way, with a machine gun to match. Following behind were what looked like a few hired goons, of course, why not. Bane always made sure to be stocked up on henchmen and backup.

This was however turning into a bit of a joke and Tiamat was getting bored of watching.

“Robin!” A slight figure leaped out of nowhere at the command, unleashing a whole arsenal of batarangs and smoke pellets. The flying pieces of metal successfully took down a portion of the goons while the pellets burst, enveloping the area in thick smoke. No one can see through it accept for Superboy but they had definitely planned this enough not to require visibility. Tiamat ’s suspicions were confirmed when the green shapeshifter charged right into the smoke, audibly knocking out more of the hired guns, both Robin and the archer jointly disabled the remaining men caught in the smoke. Bane could be heard roaring over the commotion, Gorilla sniffed and grunted. Suddenly, Superboy and a girl with a familiar symbol dived in, tackling the two. The team’s hard hitters best suited for tanks like Bane and the Gorilla. Tiamat guessed they must be this world’s Teen Titans, which meant he had to be careful who he came in contact with.

After a whole load of punching and kicking, the two villains were finally down, disappointingly enough, how boring. They began discussing something together possibly about whatever mission they were on while the blond with the lasso and the speedster began tying everyone up. Just then the  farthest man lying just a meter of where Tiamat was hiding got up and started sprinting off into the woods.

Tim watched the man as he made his escape into the darkness, soon noticed to be by the teens, his lips stretched into a sinister grin. He sat back on his haunches, preparing for the chase.

“Let the hunt begin.”

“We have a runner,” Nightwing sounded slightly fed up, his tone coloured with annoyance as he watched the last of Bane’s hired gun run of to the woods. No one could blame him, since it’s been a long day and no doubt, going to be a long night for him in Bludhaven, the wicked never sleep. So the team started off after him as the heavy hands came to take the criminals away for locking up. Kid Flash was definitely the fastest but not the brightest, and in an environment like a forest, odds were that he’d trip up or spend the whole day searching high and low for the man, so it was a good thing he wasn’t here or he’d run off not knowing where he was going or running into. Beast Boy had the right idea though, as a hound, he had the escaper’s scent. So they followed him into the thick growth. 

Finding him was actually harder than they thought, he had no tracker so all they could really rely upon was Superboy’s senses and Beast Boy’s ability to track as an animal, even then Connor couldn’t see past all the trees with his vision and Garfield lost his scent a few times.

“He must be in the deepest part of the forest by now,” Artemis said.

“Keep searching, if he’s going back to base this could mean finding the ones responsible for the meta-trafficking,” Nightwing ordered.

“He could be headed towards the docks, it’s the quickest and closest way out,” Robin said, it made sense and Nightwing agreed, it was the only other place that anyone could find a way to get off the island. As they got nearer to the docks, Superboy stopped all of a sudden, his teammates stopped as well.

“Superboy, what’s wrong, is-” Wondergirl began to say when he shushed her, his ears picking up whimpers and sobs and some frantic words that were to muffled for him to hear properly. But he could tell which direction.

“Over there,” he said, facing in the direction of the sound just off to the side to where the docks were, .

They followed Conner to what looked like the deepest part of the forest when he faltered and bent over looking shaken.

“What’s wrong,” Nightwing asked, checking him over with concern.

“Someone screamed and it wasn’t any scream, I mean a real scream,” Connor looked up and around, panicked, “I can’t hear him anymore.” 

With this disturbing reveal, Nightwing and Robin both took off in that direction, with the others following after Superboy had recovered. Beast Boy was in the lead again, with the scent strong this time and they ventured on before Garfield started yelping, then, the smell hit them hard, the smell of blood and urine.

“Oh my god,” Artemis let out a hoarse whisper.

Everyone stopped, their mouths hanging open in shock. The corpse lying before them was definitely their runner, but he wasn’t going to be answering questions or going anywhere but the morgue. His limbs stuck out at odd angles like he was flailing about so much they were arranged haphazardly, his uniform was ripped open and so was his throat. The chest area bore several gashes. Right arm ripped off and legs punctured. He looked like he’d been mauled by a savage animal except, no animal can make such clean cuts as the ones on his chest, the claws must have been thin, needle like. His mouth hung agape with terror and he must have been scared enough to wet himself with the darkened patch on his pants mixing with the blood that was now seeping in, staining the grey a darker shade.

“Wha- who could have done this?!” Cassie gasped. Nightwing took a tentative step forward, he’d seen bad things in Gotham but never something like this here. Something had made it’s way on the island.

He looked back to see Robin had also followed his movement but he seemed to be on the verge of getting sick, he was too young to witness something like this. Nightwing didn’t want to baby him. Working as Robin alongside Batman meant being in the middle of things like this but still...he glanced back at the body. This was too horrible.

“You guys, go back to HQ, call Batman, tell him we’ve got an issue, possibly something worse than the crisis at hand,” he ordered the rest of the team, “Robin, look at me, I know it’s going to be hard but go back with them, take the rest of the day off.”

“But I-.”

“Listen to me, Tim, I’m not putting you off missions because I think you’re not up for it, but I’ve had something like this happen before and it isn’t something you can just shake off, take it from a guy who tried winging it,” Dick gave him a wry smile, “Go home you earned it.”

Both Nightwing and Robin looked at the tattered remains, “I don’t think it’s exactly safe there right now.” 

Batman was waiting for them when Nightwing and a few others were finished assessing the situation and had returned to their new cave headquarters. The mountain they had once called base was demolished and smoothed over but in the process of retrieving precious components the had managed to unearth tunnels and caverns formed long ago when lava still flowed here.

It was almost like the old one, well, technically it was, or rather an extension of the old cave.

Batman was tapping away at the computer when they finally arrived.

“I’ve heard a lot about what happened, report.”

Aqualad, Blue Beetle looked rather ill, Nightwing wasn’t happy to have dug his hands deep into the case. 

“Nothing good,” Dick said as he produced a image storage card from one of his compartments, and slotted it into the computer then turned to the rest of the teens gathered around watching curiously, “If any of you guys just ate and don’t have the stomach for this, you might want to look away, especially you Static.”

“I think I’m cool, I’ve been working on this team for a while.”

None of them seemed to be able to look away and Nightwing raised a brow questioningly but relented, “Suit yourself.”

The series of images that popped up on the screen were...hard to digest. The first image of the dead gunman in the woods was obvious, to some but there were more, far more to come. And they got bloodier and bloodier, multiple bodies piled upon each other or strewn around warehouses, corridors, missing limbs, missing eyes, throats torn, one had his skull crushed and a few sliced cleanly in half. All merciless, and brutally killed. All in the same uniform. 

Some retching could be heard in the background, a few of the teens’ eyes had gone wide and forced to look away. Even Superboy, claiming to be fearless didn’t find it easy to be seeing this. Bart grimaced.

“We can assume that this was the base where our runner was going to and whoever, whatever got to him got here first, from what I can tell there were no survivors.”

“Oh god,” M’gann’s voice was merely a whisper.

“Have you determined who they were working for?”

“Only that the hired muscle belonged to Luthor and the whole operation was headed by Bane. The base located just a few miles off the coast was built overnight, it’s supposed to be temporary. That’s how they got so many guys to infiltrate the island. Today was supposed to be the first wave, scout and weaken we know the Light is pulling strings again and they were planning to completely take out the Young Justice.” 

“The full attack was scheduled two days from now, a whole army coming at us...there were a lot of people stationed at that base.” 

Nightwing looked visibly shaken, but he collected himself enough to give the rest of the report, “That’s all the information I was able to recover from their smaller caches, along with the shots we took of the scene but the rest of the data that was in their main computer, is gone, no messages, no videos, all taken or destroyed,” Nightwing looked grim. 

Batman narrowed his eyes and turned back to the screen, scrolling through the images stored on the memory card. The info explained only a portion of the operation but nothing on what transpired there, no indications of unusual activity, which meant that whatever happened, happened suddenly and quickly. His mind racing through a million possibilities, scenarios, potential suspects who wanted in on this operation or just to sabotage it. Joker was on the list, even if he worked with the Light before, he and they both knew he was a wild card of sorts and could turn easily on any one. But this…

Beside him, Robin had taken a step forward analysing each photograph, the investigator inside of him pushing past his queasiness to work out all the clues and Bruce didn’t miss a single moment of that.

“Whoever did this knew what they were doing, but it wasn’t exactly planned, no, I think it all started with the runner,” Batman said.

“How can you be sure?” Aqualad questioned.

“No prior reports of related activity and in such a short time period starting, with your fight with him he’s done a lot of damage,” Batman continued before Jaime cut in.

“Wait, he?”

“Just one person?” Artemis added.

Batman gave Robin a look, body language he was trained to understand, by now, he’d analysed all that he could in those shots and was already organising them into vital information in his head, he started, “There’s blood on the floor that doesn’t match the shape of any of the men in the photos, it’s distinctly male given the size of the footprint, and it can’t be female as the toes are not narrow enough. The back of the print is narrower so the heel must be high, that alone separates it from the any one of the Lex’s men.” 

“Plus there are some distinct marks in front of each print, they look like dots but on closer inspection,” Robin zooms in on one particular print showing a print with several patterned holes in the front, “Our...killer has clawed feet.” 

“Whoa,” Bart said.

“What the hell could that be?” Static threw up his hands frustrated in the riddle talk, “Our mystery guy has clawed feet and is wearing high heels? Apart from fashion statement, is he human? Meta like us?”

Batman and Nightwing exchanged looks, everybody just looked worried.

“You’re thinking something else aren’t you.”

“Without further investigation we don’t have much to go on, but our gut instinct says the same, someone, something has made it here.”

“And whoever or whatever that is, is extremely dangerous,” Nightwing warned.

“Are you even sure it’s just the one guy?” Kon asked.

There was a pause, Batman turned to the screen, scanning the pictures of mutilated and half eaten bodies littered across it, before he answered, “With this kind of carnage, let’s hope we’re just dealing with one threat and not an army.” 

Meanwhile at Lex Corporations, news about the massacre had reached Luthor, and he was not amused. He sat at his desk scrolling through the reports and the images attached, articles that were published days before. He cared little about the men he hired to do his work but was no savage and seeing the aftermath of the attack, he could only conclude it was performed by one. He could put the blame on a few named psychopaths but wild guesses may not help his case. The announcement given by the Batman claimed that it was both a calculated move and a spur of the moment impulse. The  So now, he had a rabid but logical killer on his hands, probably headed for him. With nothing to help identify them it could turn out to be any one person or maybe more, he’s had attempts on his life but it helps to know the suspects, Arsenal a most recent example but a missile is easy to see, easy to counter. From what Lex could tell, this one will give no warning, far too unpredictable.

“Mercy, make the call, our protective measures won’t be enough I’m afraid,” Luthor said. His bodyguard immediately took out the phone to begin dialling, “I have a call to make myself.”

“So, you’re saying that you’re being hunted, why am I not surprised?” Klarion smirked.

Luthor cocked an eyebrow in response to the jarring comment but continued, “If I may continue, it is but a theory, the only thing that causes doubt is the suddenness of the incident. I’d rather be safe than sorry that’s all.”

“A few dead men and you’re concerned?” the Queen mocked lightly, “How very unlike you.”

“Simply cautious my dear, unlike some,” Luthor shot back, making the woman wrinkle her nose slightly but comment no further.

“Now, now, no need for us to argue over such matters, I understand how important it is to be vigilant, Luthor. You have our support. Let’s hope this setback doesn’t last too long,” Vandal said.

“Thank you, I’ll lay low for a bit, in the meantime we should end the threat while it’s still early.”

Klarion hummed in playful doubt, “I dunno, maybe whoever this is could be fun to play with. They’ve caused quite a stir everywhere.”

“Oui, perhaps this newcomer will make a good ally,” the Brain said in his heavily accented English. Lex looked doubtful, as the Queen but both Savage and Klarion seemed open to the idea, Klarion more so with a glee in his eyes. As long as chaos was involved anything would be enough to keep the boy happy. Though the other members were uncertain, a little bit of investment could go a long way. With both Black Manta and Ra’s unavailable to comment, the majority voted on watching the newcomer first, see if there was anything he could offer and act when the moment was right. 

“Let us observe for the moment, we shall soon see if he can serve the Light.”

Princess, part 9

     [This story is a prequel, set several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16.  Links to some of my other work are here.  Updates were theoretically biweekly–more realistically, I’m going to try to get the next one out by early June.]

Previous: Part 8

     Senses were funny things.  You could use them without having any idea how they worked, or even that you had them.  Ask most people how many senses there were and they would tell you 'five.'  Then ask about balance and you might get a frown, a thoughtful look, or a rationalization, depending on the person.       Even after Flicker had acquired Database access, it had taken her quite a while to realize that there were senses she had that humans didn't have, or didn't use quite the same way.  When she did, she'd talked to Sealord, who most people thought of as the 'ruler' of the Deep Kingdoms--the truth was way messier, but Sealord was resigned to the human preference for simple fictions over complicated facts.  He was a giant squid who could shapeshift into human form for communication and diplomatic purposes, and he'd been willing to indulge Flicker's curiosity with several long conversations about sensory differences.  That had helped her appreciate how profoundly senses affected thinking, and how some things she found strange about normal humans were natural consequences of having different senses.       Flicker had a mass sense.  Most humans didn't.  They had to estimate it by sight, touch, or experience.  That felt weird to her.  Doc had confirmed that the only reason humans didn't injure themselves as a result even more often than they did was a significant amount of effort put into engineering their environment around the problem.       She didn't actively use it much while stationary.  The resolution wasn't great except near her fingertips, and even then, sight was better if the light was adequate.  Mass sense didn't connect to her mind the same way vision did, so it was laborious to use it to read carved letters or braille.  Intervening mass made it a little fuzzier, but it still let her tell if someone was right on the other side of a door that might need to suddenly disappear, or find a breaker panel even if some idiot had covered it.  It really came into its own when she was moving--the faster the better.  It was at the core of her reflexes for maneuvering and collision avoidance.  It worked in the dark, couldn't be blocked, and always let her know which way was down.       It also let her sense things that were quite far away, if they were massive enough.  Like the Sun.       And the Moon.       That made it better than sight right now.  On flat ground or water when she was running around on Earth, her velocity vector was necessarily tangent to Earth's surface.  If she wanted it to be pointing at the Moon when she jumped, that meant the Moon had to be on the horizon.  Except it looked like it was above it to eyes, because air bent light.  Her visor could compensate, but she didn't need it.  She could see the Moon's mass.       She was at the right place, at the right velocity.  It was the right time.  She jumped.       Down.       Jumping up wasn't safe.  That was a bone-deep reflex for Flicker, ingrained for longer than she could remember.  The only safe direction to jump was towards a large mass.  If she got out of momentum transfer range of the ground--about 50 meters--it was scary enough.  She had practiced that by jumping back and forth between canyon walls, and the vastly decreased ability to change her vector had been frightening and disturbing, but endurable.  Up, at high velocity, was not.       But down...  Down worked.       Flicker jumped down toward the surface of the Moon at five percent of the speed of light, trailing plasma as she left Earth's atmosphere behind.       *****       Yesterday.       Doc leaned back in the chair at his workstation and took a sip of coffee.       "Still a lot of failure modes," he said.  "Some because of the number of variables we have to extrapolate rather than interpolate.  And more from mechanics we don't even know about yet.  But if that wasn't true, you wouldn't need Speedtest.  All your support will be ready for tomorrow."       "Do you think I should wait longer?" asked Flicker.       "That's a decision no one but you can make.  You've done all your preparation and backups.  The Database says your judgement is within appropriate limits.  If you think you should wait, then wait.  I won't argue.  But no, I don't think it would necessarily help.  Your disinclination to delay further is reasonable.  The world doesn't stand still--waiting for a perfect time can be a trap.  Speedtest was always going to be risky."       "You don't think Journeyman's Diviner data was relevant?"       "I wouldn't go that far.  I have been taking precautions in case someone's been waiting until you're gone to try triggering a nuclear war or something similarly idiotic."       "Oh.  Any further news from him?"       "Last word was that he had been unable to contact anyone else helpful," said Doc.  "Which is understandable.  Trying to use divination to control a global level timing decision might be causally unstable--and a positive feedback loop in either back-propagation or future causal reinforcement could get quite nasty for them."       "What's your estimate for success chances?" she asked.  "DASI won't give me anything quantitative.  Says it's an overinterpretation hazard."       "Then I'm afraid you won't find mine very useful," said Doc. "It's too dependent on judgements you'll be making on the spot, after you have more data.  So I'm not willing to commit to numbers either."       A deep breath.  "How about something qualitative?"       "Very well.  I think you're almost certain to arrive at the Moon physically able to collect data, quite likely to make it back to Earth still mobile, reasonably favored to return technically alive, and have a decent chance at avoiding serious injury.  All return possibilities drop to near zero if you get an abort call from Breakpoint and don't listen."       "Technically alive means I don't have to try a mass template restore to survive?"       "Or need isotope exchange to avoid the death of your physical body from extreme radioactivity or an unlivable isotope balance.  Your powers do not appear to confer complete immunity to nucleosynthesis.  That's why I beefed up the force fields on the rad-hardened regen tank and moved it next to the exchanger and the cooling channels for the isotope burner.  I don't think it's the most likely scenario--but it is one that can be ameliorated by proper preparation.  Possibly.  It still wouldn't be pleasant."       Flicker snorted.  "Well, duh.  We planned it out to find the unpleasant surprises while we're ready.  How about data?"       "The Volunteer already dropped off the sensors and repeaters, and you have a robust set of communication backups for interim reports and emergencies.  Get back reasonably intact and you can update details in person."       She looked at him.  He wouldn't say 'Be careful'.  But he knew how she felt about the data.  That was pure Doc.  That was... okay.       Flicker smiled.  "All right," she said.       *****       Now.       Fear was normally an emotion Flicker could remove to a distance by speeding up her mind--it was a thing of chemistry or memory.       Not her problem with heights, though.  That was her speed mind subconscious letting her know, in no uncertain terms, that Something was Wrong.  She was ready for it.       She was less ready for the cascade of alarms and less identifiable information from speed mind and body that started piling up as soon as she left most of the atmosphere behind.  They roughly mapped to itchiness, tingling, and discomfort in places she hadn't even known she had, and whose topology and even dimensionality was not immediately obvious.  But she was in an environment she'd never experienced before--a vacuum, far from mass, with significant velocity toward her destination--so she'd expected something new.       She sped her mind up more to catalog everything and record her impressions for the Database.  That beat anxious waiting during what would otherwise be a subjectively interminable coast phase of her journey to the Moon.  She also tried to interpret what she could.       One existing alert that was usually omnipresent whenever she moved had gone silent--okay, that was hazardous mass flow, since she was now moving through vacuum.  Never mind that several other alarms were complaining about said vacuum--not that it was a vacuum, but that it was the wrong kind.  The constant01 was too low, constant02 was too high, several somewhat less important constants were nevertheless far outside tolerances, and many things wanted recalibration.       And there was a nagging feeling:  Her untranslated01 was locked down by override, so constant03 was too high--a potential hazard; did she want to start the override reset process so she could restore constant03 to default?  A least within--okay, same range as her momentum transfer, so--50 meters?       Puzzle her way through the correspondences.  Constant03 matched the scale factor for the electromagnetic quantum.       She wasn't sure what her untranslated01 was, but it wanted to turn itself on and change Planck's constant to some unknown default, everywhere within 50 meters.       Nooooo, I don't think so.       A bit of fear was back.  Flicker noted a few things that might become relevant to her tests, then started carefully putting up mental hazard tape around new internal regions of Don't Want to Mess With That.       *****       Closing in on the Moon, finally.  Flicker's visor told her she was approaching at about 15,000 kilometers per second, or 0.05c.  But she didn't really need it as long as she was going reasonably fast.  As part of her mass sense, she could tell her velocity relative to any massive frame of reference.  And the sense was much sharper when she wasn't damping and compensating for a constant bombardment of passing air.       Her velocity was fine--direction was nearly straight down towards a spot close to the center of the visible disc of the Moon.  And her inertial damping and momentum transfer also felt crisper.  Could she get a frame lock before she landed?  Time to find out.       Feet first, arms extended above her head, feeling for that welcome mass.  100 meters.       3 more microseconds.  55 meters.       Approaching 50...  Frame lock!  Hello Moon!       Decelerate.  Ten billion g's straight, with a frame locked momentum dump on top.  It hit the moon like a tiny pulse of gravitational waves.       Slower, slower, nanoseconds rushing by.  Under 100 km/s.  Toes touched, still decelerating.       Flex the knees, swing her arms down, and... stationary!  Distance 0, velocity 0.       She stood.  Damn, solid ground felt good.  And she'd managed it without any plasma or explosions--just a spray of dust as the lunar surface rebounded from the momentum transfer.  She sent a landing summary com dump to the nearest repeater, and received prerecorded congratulations from DASI in return.  She tilted her head back and looked up at the Earth.       "Hey Doc," she sent.  "No crash.  No crater.  No fireball.  No problem.  The Flicker has landed."       She didn't wait for a reply before she started accelerating.  That would take more than 2 seconds, and she had work to do.  Data to gather.       *****       Setup.  Move.  Test.  Send data and analyze.  Flicker fell into a pleasant rhythm.  The lack of atmosphere made everything crisper--it was easier to distinguish more distant details with her mass sense when there wasn't air in the way.  The solid frame lock was a joy; the absence of things like buried cables, basements, sewers, and other man-made voids meant a more assured connection to the ground, and the lack of life and air meant she didn't have to juggle side effects.  This let her change direction far more easily if she didn't also change speed--sharing momentum with an intangible 'Moon hug' allowed her to dissipate less energy staying on the surface, even though it was smaller than the Earth and she was moving faster.       A lot faster.       And she confirmed something interesting about her mass sense.  The velocity part was not a side effect.  She wasn't sensing mass so much as spacetime curvature, including all the changes caused by her velocity.  She could use relativity to see.  It showed her an odd universe--but it didn't get any more odd when she sped up, and all her regular senses did.  It let her aim--without using her visor--at something she was approaching obliquely at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and still hit it with a tossed object.  (A tiny one--she didn't want to cause too big a fireball.)       And the speed measure she sensed wasn't a thing of distance over time, or even a direct comparison to light.  It was a scale factor--a number--and a very practical one.  Gamma.       What was gamma?  Gamma was the most useful thing to know about your speed when you were going real fast.  When relativity wasn't just noticeable, but dominant.       Most popular explanations of special relativity described strange effects that became apparent when you were traveling close to the speed of light.  Distances got shorter, time slowed down, masses increased.  But how much shorter?  Gamma.  How much slower?  Gamma.  Increased by what factor?  Gamma.       How did you find it?  Well, if you knew the velocity of an object you could calculate it: It was 1 over the square root of 1 minus v squared over c squared.  But Flicker didn't need to calculate it.  She could feel it.       A whole bunch of physics equations had a simple form that was really a low speed approximation, and more complicated accurate form for fast things that used gamma.  Or the Lorentz factor, if you were being formal or talking to radiation people who were twitchy about high energy photons of the same name.  Standing still was gamma 1, and it went up from there.  All the way up, because it made something very clear about the speed of light.  No matter how close you got to it, you were still infinitely far away, because the speed of light was infinite gamma.       Another thing it made clear was how relatively slow she had to go on Earth.       Her jump to the Moon had been at 0.05c, which corresponded to a gamma of 1.00125 or so.       Her normal Earth speed limit was 0.2c--gamma 1.021.       She moved between tests at 0.8c--gamma 1.667, and the effects were quite noticeable.  The whole Moon was flattened--but only in the direction she was traveling.  Every object was flattened or stretched, and the light coming from them made them look twisted.  For the trial run for the final speed test she'd gone up to 0.96c--gamma 3.571. That turned the Moon into a modestly thick disc, with her constantly cresting the edge.  And pushing down hard to stay on the surface.  How hard scaled with both velocity squared and gamma squared.  The frame lock let her do it, but 60 billion g's down was still a lot.  Sensors and her visor had started picking up some unusual effects, so Doc and the Database were analyzing them back on Earth while she finished up everything else.       One thing that had turned out to be a bigger problem than expected was dust.  Not regular surface dust, which Flicker was careful not to disturb unnecessarily, but the tiniest particles from the interplanetary dust cloud, sifting down to the surface of the Moon unhindered by air.  They weren't collectively anywhere near as dense as air, but they were too small to avoid, too common to ignore, just fast enough to replenish cleared paths, and too isolated and erratic to deflect with her usual flow and plasma tricks.  Her inertial damping kept them from causing much direct damage, but her space modified costume was rapidly becoming radioactive, and they had the potential to cause other problems.       She finished the last of the extended tests, then slowed down to breathe.  She was running low on oxygen, so she topped off her small, hardened supply from the tank in the preplaced stash.  She could go without breathing for quite a while if she had to, but it wasn't fun.  The tank and its backup were in somewhat less radiation and shock tolerant containers, and that looked like it might become a problem.  She sent off her preliminary test assessment to Earth, then browsed Database inferences while she waited for Doc's reply.       "I concur with the plasma-cleared torus for the final run," said Doc.  "It will stay dust-free for long enough.  Go as fast as you feel safe.  I won't be able to talk to you, but I'll be monitoring.  Don't worry about anything else.  Good luck, and see you soon."       Flicker smiled.  At last.  The Speedtest grand finale.       How fast dare I go, with nothing in the way?  I shall run and find out.       She felt as free as she'd ever been.       *****       First great circle circuit, deliberately kicking up Moon dust at gamma 3.5. Done in 38 milliseconds for the Moon, 11 for her.       Second circuit, turning the dust into a continuous plasma tunnel blasting outward to repel or vaporize anything new that might wander into her way.       Back around to begin the third circuit.       And deep inside her mind, she decided something else.  There were no intelligent beings closer to her than Earth, over a light second away.  There was no one else who could think inside her light cone, and wouldn't be, for over a second, unless something very strange--and very damning--happened.  She had projectiles ready, just in case.  But she didn't think anything would.       Because she wasn't just testing, she was hunting.       "That's a decision no one but you can make," Doc had said.  With more implications than were obvious.  She could go for a safer final test--or push to the limit.  And no one, no one, could know in advance.  She took counsel of the plasma noise, random fluctuations.  Unique to this worldline and unpredictable.       And made her choice.       She did not forget the thin threads that connected her to humanity, even while she was out here, far enough away that no one else would get hurt.  She remembered silly bits and pieces of life, collected haphazardly like precious mementos, that made her as human as she could be.           Vacuum calls to me           Many universes sing           I dance in this one       She started accelerating.       *****       Gamma 20, circling the Moon.  A circuit would take just 2 milliseconds for her--if she stopped accelerating, which she didn't.  Just under 37 milliseconds for the Moon.  That wasn't going to change change much anymore, she was already over 0.99c.  She had fully clamped down on her body with her power, preserving every nucleus in every atom of her body in its relative local position, regardless of now-forbidden chemistry.  The electrons were still free to move, and did, streaming outwards, carrying entropy that now had few other ways to escape.  New electrons kept arriving, pulled by her increasing positive charge, but they were expelled in turn.       She moved in a very strange realm, twisted and Doppler shifted, full of increasingly furious radiation from solar wind and residual plasma particles encountered at massive speed.  But they were essentially standing still.  The speed was all hers.  They were just in the way.       *****       She was hunting a probability manipulator, possibly an Oracle, certainly one that had access to visions of the future--and one who wished her ill.  Whoever had sent Hermes, so carefully timed to hit her at a weak point.  And possibly given her an extra push to sabotage her relationship with Journeyman.  But they had done nothing traceable.  Yet.  She was giving them an opportunity to change that.  A very tempting one.       *****       Gamma 70.  Almost 0.9999c.  Tiny second order effects were becoming large, and previously unnoticed third order ones were becoming noticeable.  The frame-locked centripetal acceleration downward, keeping her near the surface as she speed skated over the Moon, had become massive, and those tiny effects were generating heat.  She was entropy dumping it into the lunar surface at a significant rate now.       *****       How much could an Oracle see?  They weren't perfect; they couldn't be.  And how fast could they see a new future, if it changed?  Doc's time loop theories set limits on that.  So many theories, which ones were right?  Who could know?  But there were predictions in common.  And there was something special about the fifty ciruit limit for the final run of Speedtest.  It would extend over an interval long enough for light--and causality--to get from Earth to the Moon.  Barely.  But not long enough for a round trip.       So an Oracle might see a beginning of Speedtest from Earth, and the right time and place and worldline to send a probability manipulation pulse to affect the end.  Or they could see an end, and the time and place to join that Earth.  But not both.       *****       Gamma 707.  0.999999c.  Near full ionization--the electrons couldn't keep up as she pulled them from the ground and the surrounding plasma.  Her body sent a banshee wail of synchrotron radiation outward as she pulled down at trillions of g's to stay on the Moon.  Her visor had died; nothing electronic could hope to survive the flux she was sending out now.  But it wouldn't be much longer.       *****       She hadn't told Journeyman.  She hadn't told Doc.  She hadn't told DASI.  She'd made her choice in a small part of her high speed mind intended for diagnostics.  It was the right size for a human-like mind, if not remotely human shaped.  It was enough.  She'd set her trap.  She was the trap.  Her would-be nemesis could take what looked like their best shot, localizing themselves to a particular Earth worldline--but not if they wanted to see how it all turned out.       Flicker bared her teeth.       *****       Gamma 2886.  0.99999994c.  A complete circuit would take less than 13 microseconds subjective because of time dilation.  An outside observer would measure her mass at 144 metric tons.  Over 10^22 Joules of kinetic energy, more than 3,000 gigatons of TNT.  She was still moving stably, but the side effects were just becoming too much.  Flicker stopped accelerating, holding her speed steady as she approached the far side of the Moon before her planned deceleration.  She hadn't quite managed the full fifty circuits, but she didn't want to tear the Moon apart, and the strip of ground under her had already absorbed a massive amount of energy from her entropy dumping.  She had her data--it was time to slow down.  Too bad.  Her trap didn't seem to have--       Her entropy dumping weakened, then stopped completely.  Internal alarms blared and she started heating up.  Quickly.       There it was.  Got you, you bastard.       Now to stay alive.  First, get around to the far side before her temperature rose too--       Her frame lock started to waver, releasing a blast of energy when she compensated.       Shit.  Hang on.  Earth should not have line of sight to what was about to happen.       Let go of non-essentials.  Dump them--she could still connect to everything inside her 10 centimeter inertial damping range.  Costume, hood, remaining projectiles, now-useless visor, hair.  Blast them away at 50 million K.  Up and forward.  Push out energy and momentum.  That got her over the horizon.       The frame lock broke.  Facing almost directly away from Earth.  Yeah, that was how the bastard had planned to get rid of her--off into interstellar space at relativistic speed with no hope of survival, let alone return.       Her regular acceleration limit was 10 billion g's.  She needed way more to stay near the Moon at this speed, and had no time to slow down.  But there was a way.       Curve around, heating up.  Torrents of particles inside her, pair production from pushing too hard.  Heat.  Pain.  Alarms.  She altered her path slightly.  Dust was the least of her worries.  But one last push, and she could slow down enough to stay near the surface.  The oldest way.       Lithobraking.       This is going to hurt.       Flicker, still moving at a gamma of over 2700, ran head on into a mountain at the edge of the South Pole--Aitken basin.       Discontinuity.       *****       Shattering fragments of intruding nucleons.  Neutrinos.  Angry photons, disintegrating every nucleus that wasn't hers.  More neutrinos.  Sprays of high-mass, short-lived hadrons.  Even more neutrinos.  Energy and entropy with nowhere to go pulling quarks from the vacuum.       Heat and pain.  Alarms screaming, distantly.  Was she below the Hagedorn temperature yet?       Enough.  Radiate ALL the neutrinos.  They could get out without running into anything, unlike everything else.       Keep curving around, the Moon was still there.  At least ahead of her.  What was behind her was less important.  Push entropy into a smaller and smaller region inside.  Concentrate the heat.  Keep pumping out neutrinos.       Until Flicker finally cooled, and slowed to a crawl.  Still intact.       Well, relatively cool.  Under a billion kelvins.  And a relative crawl, gamma 3 or so.       And relatively... wait.  Why was she more massive?  Her nuclei were still there--at least the same elements, she had that locked in.       Was it foreign matter in her lungs and gastrointestinal tract?  No... Some nucleons had started fusing again after photodisintegration, run through the CNO cycle, and the resulting helium was now merrily alpha-processing its way up the curve of binding energy.  Reassuringly normal physics, if not the sort she generally wanted inside her body. But it was very low density.  Not enough to explain--       Oh.  "Your powers do not appear to confer complete immunity to nucleosynthesis."  That weird feeling and extra mass was a vast excess of r-process heavy isotopes left from neutron bombardment by the fragments of the mountain she'd run through.       She was...  Gods and monsters she was a mess.  Excessively radioactive, and going to stay that way until the millisecond isotopes decayed.  Technically alive didn't look like it was happening soon, even after electrons came back.  Time to try for 'back to Earth still mobile'.       No way to dump heat but radiation, so she radiated as she pushed down to stay on the last arc of her great circle curve.  She sensed the Earth clearly, the welcome mass of home.  Finally, it rose above the horizon and she could let go.  Jump back down to Earth.       Goodbye, Moon.  It was nice meeting you.  Sorry about the mess.       *****       Flicker spared a microsecond for a hunt assessment as she plummeted back towards Earth, radiating copiously.  Things didn't look good for fast pursuit of whoever had hit her with the attack.  Most of her normal senses were down--her flesh body had turned into a strangely rigid plasma, a bare framework for what might eventually be something humanlike again.  Her com options were down to glorified handwaving and signal cannons, and even if she could get triangulation data quickly after getting back to Earth, the list of things wrong catalogued by her speed mind was more than a human mind could comprehend.  It was hard to set up alarm flood handling for body parts you didn't know you had, and those early itchy complaints about lack of calibration had had a point.  At least some of the alerts seemed to be consequences of self-repair.  They kept her mind off damage, and pain.  Silver linings...       Her untranslated01 was being passive-aggressive about altering Plank's constant again, with damage mitigation suggestions implying that if she was insistent on using neutrino cooling in such an (untranslated) (untranslated) environment, it would help.  Or maybe she was just projecting; she would be snarky in the kind of alarms you generally only saw after ignoring many 'No! Stop! Unsafe!' ones.       Sorry, still no messing with Plank's constant.       Flicker was going to have enough trouble drag braking by momentum transfer in the upper atmosphere.  Even if she just used it to buffer her inherent deceleration, it would be unstable for induced torque, and she would have to add energy to keep from spinning violently.  How much?  She didn't know; she hadn't planned on coming home quite this fast.  And she really wanted to limit her energy dissipation to kilotons instead of megatons.  She was going to reenter over the Pacific, but pulling a super-Tunguska on the way down would be obnoxious.       ...and the atmosphere was coming up quick, she could feel the flux increasing and oh, what a great time for her vertigo to come back.  Because her eyes weren't working, she was using mass sense to see and flux rates to maneuver and that didn't help with dizzyness.       Drag, trying to stabilize on the thin upper atmospehere, working as well as she'd expected:  Badly.       Torque.  Starting to spin.  Shit.  Counter it.  Shitshit too much.  Tumbling on a different axis.  Slow it.  Okay.       Plasma everywhere, had she dumped enough?  Gamma 1.12, not yet.  But the air was thick enough now she could start using her old inertial damping flow tricks, as long as she didn't care how much she heated up, so she stopped trying to fight it, just smoothed it out, let her momentum drop the old fashioned way.       Okay, it looked like it was going to be megatons after all, but spread out, and hopefully not too many...       Lower atmosphere, and surface of the ocean coming up.  Whoops, mass flow went up, what?  Ah, water, she was coming in through a thunderstorm, not ideal, but--wait, scratch that, she was insanely radioactive in Earth terms and she was about to hit salt water, fresh water was better to slow down...       Down to about 0.07c, and she didn't manage to frame lock until she was within 40 meters, bad timing with waves, but she could entropy dump again!  Relief!  She could finally--okay that was a lot of heat, she'd caused some fusion coming in, but it was just thermal X-rays, mostly, and...       This landing did cause a fireball.  But she'd made it back.  Now she needed to readjust her perspective to Earth-appropriate energy levels and start moving, because she was still radiating, a lot of it was neutrons, and the shock wave from her landing might--       Oh crap, what's that?  Density voids beneath the surface within a few kilometers, going to get hit by her impact shockwave.  What was... Whales.  She was seeing the air inside the lungs of whales with her density sense.  Were they far enough away to survive?  Maybe.  Anything else?       What was that, up in the sky?       Something human-sized, coming in at just over orbital speed--wait, she'd know that shockwave anywhere, no one else flew like that, it had to be the Volunteer.       Flicker sped over to just in front of him and slowed down enough for him to see--millisecond timescales, but how to talk?  She couldn't see, and her com was ancient history.       He could see.  And she could write.  Plasma letters in the air over the ocean.  She didn't need his help, but others did.       Shockwave.  Can't stay.  Save the whales.       He could get details from Doc, and it was time for her to go.  She dared not remain stationary for more than a few milliseconds yet--she was entropy dumping just to get down to solar surface temperatures, neutron activation was a thing, she needed some radiation time before it would be safe to head for Doc's, and salt water was not the best place for it.       South.  0.05c.  Her flow compensation in air was still shaky, not up to her usual standards, and she'd scattered plenty of high energy plasma around already.       *****       Antarctica.  Ross ice shelf.  Nothing but fresh water and dry air.  A good place to cool down, and as good as she was going to get to radiate neutrons.  Slow loops, down at a thousand kilometers per second, slow enough to be ghosting--if she hadn't been glowing hot.       Her path was predictable, and she finally heard a signal--an orbital pulse maser from Doc, sending coded bits she could feel directly.  Low bandwidth, noisy, but 'Threat gone'?  Had her attacker escaped already?       Anger kindled.  But she wasn't thinking clearly beyond immediate needs, too many things were still wrong--store the anger, there were places for it, places that wouldn't get completely cleared when she could finally sleep again.  She would remember, regardless.       Seconds stretched out.  But fresh water could absorb neutrons with very little persistent radiation, and her nuclei were settling down a bit--excited isomers and excess neutrons were making their way out, electrons were returning long enough to start accumulating, and her radiation profile was slowly dropping to the point where she might be able to actually stop somewhere with appropriate cooling.       More pulses.  'Pumps on.  Shields up.  Isotope exchanger ready.'       Doc was prepared.  And she needed that exchanger.  She was still clamped down hard, and had to stay that way, because she had too many nuclei that were too neutron heavy to be stable--and letting them decay would change them to different elements, and, say, carbon changing to nitrogen inside her DNA would be A Problem when she let the chemistry in her body restart.  To say nothing of all the tritium.  She needed time in the shop before she could even consider restarting biology and life.       A long time.  Hours, possibly days.  Not pleasant, not optional.       And she'd cooled and radiated enough.  Equilibrium decay temperature was manageable.  Time to head home.       *****       Back at Doc's, inside the force fields that protected everything else from her.  The pumps did their work bringing fresh water in range for entropy dumping, so she could cool without moving.  Isotope exchange started, hands and eyes first, so she could see and type for the rest.       She still had many questions.  But she'd survived Speedtest, discovered so much, run up to gamma 2886, 0.99999994c, weathered the attack, and made it home.  Soon she would be able to start recording data again, and ask some of those questions.  Her attacker appeared to have escaped.  But they had been triangulated, from the timing of the attack on the Moon along with signals extracted from the Omniresonators at the Database nodes.  There was a distinctive signature--and the attacker had fled, immediately, to another dimension, without waiting to see if their attack succeeded.  They feared her survival.       Flicker lived.  And she would not forget.

Next:  Part 10

MSA: Shapeshifter/Werewolf AU

NOTE: So there is a ton of really good werewolf-Arthur stuff floating around and I love it. Here is one more. Also, I read this and got inspired. 

Summary: Werewolf-Arthur but Vivi and Lewis are shapeshifters. They all go out on the full moon Harry Potter style. Set pre-canon.

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The sky is bright blue today. If the weather report is to be believed, it will remain clear for the next five nights. Perfect for camping. Everything is falling into place, and Arthur is feeling increasingly energised. There is an extra spring to his step uncommon for this time of the mouth. Even his Uncle Lance, who hovers, face creased into an almost permanent frown, can’t dampen his spirits.

Arthur shoves clothes into his bag, throwing a comment over his shoulder, “I’ll be fine. Mystery is supervising.”

“Mystery. Mystery ya friend’s dog. That Mystery?” His Uncle, leaning against the doorframe, scowls some more, sounding disgruntled. After so many years living with the man, Arthur knows that the irritation is just a poor disguise for worry. He pays it no mind, continuing to pack.  

“I think he is some form a Kitsune. You know, a Japanese fox spirit. He’s like Vivi, except, instead of pretending to be a human, he pretends to be a dog. Also, Mystery’s a few hundred years old, a whole lot more powerful, and he is super experienced when it comes to these things.”

“I don’t like it.”

Arthur sighs, lifting his stuffed duffle bag. His Uncle’s distrust of the Yukino family has been an ongoing source of tension this last week. Vivi’s dad had it out for him, some old prejudice about curses and bad luck, but Mystery has never seemed bothered by it.

“It’s either this or a night in the basement,” He reasons, twitching in discomfort at the thought of being stuck in the basement for another full moon. The idea is equally unattractive to his Uncle, who grimaces. Neither of them enjoys locking Arthur up for full moons. Especially now, when Arthur is older and more unpredictable, and there is a large iron cage involved. He hates that cage. Necessary for his Uncle’s safety, but unpleasant on all counts.

His Uncle relents, “I want ya to call every night when possible.”

Arthur hoists a tent up in his free hand with an ease born of supernatural strength. With the full moon tomorrow, the bleed between human and wolf is becoming increasingly pronounced, resulting in heightened senses and ability.

“If anything happens, even if it's bad, you come back, ya hear. I don’t give a shit about what ya do when you’re the wolf, you come back, and we’ll deal with it together like we always do.”

Arthur slips around his Uncle, heading for the front door and his waiting van. “Yes. I know. I will.”

“If I don’t hear from ya, I’m hiking out there to track ya down myself.”

The air is crisp — a beautiful day. Arthur strides out across the parking lot, relishing the feel of open space. The sprawling desert on either side of him beckons to him. ‘Run. Be free,’ his instincts tell him. The door to the front reception rattles in its frame, and his Uncle follows him outside.

“I’ll be fine. We’ve been planning this for ages. I’m even looking forward to it.” He turns, smiling despite ongoing misgivings. To look forward to a full moon is monumental. It is something entirely new for Arthur. Honesty, he’s still not sure how to deal with it and is almost waiting for it all to come crashing down around him. Surely, someone is about to jump out and inform him that this all a joke.

His Uncle hesitates on approach, torn for maybe a second before deflating. He steps up to put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. The action takes a bit of stretching, due to Lance’s shorter statue.  

“I’m just worried about ya.”

“I know. I swear I won’t take any chances. This is going to work. Trust me.” It had to work because, as amazing as his Uncle is, he is still just a human-A human with a werewolf nephew who put themselves in danger every month. Arthur’s biggest fear is waking up one of these mornings to discover his Uncle dead by his hand.  

Thankfully, his Uncle nods in acceptance, reaching forward and pulling him down for a ruff hug. Arthur breaths in, scenting the familiar oil and grease mixed with tobacco underling the salami sandwich Lance ate for lunch yesterday. It’s a comforting scent. They separate, and Arthur steps away, swinging himself into the van, throwing his belongings into the back.

Lance walks to stand near the window, folding his arms once again.

“Don’t forget. Call. Every night.”

“I will,” Arthur answers, wavering before flipping the ignition and accelerating out of the lot. Vivi, living smack in the centre of town, is a half-hour drive from Kingsman Mechanics.

When he pulls up, the whole Yukino family is out on their porch. Vivi is having some disagreement with her father, her mum looks to be playing mediator, and the Yukino elder is idly tracking his approach. They make eye contact. Arthur sinks low in his seat, so he is mostly hidden from view. Just perfect. He’d been hoping to avoid drawing attention to himself.

While he waits, he deliberately ignores how the wards around Vivi’s house make his skin itchy and hair stand on end. Wards designed to deter creatures like him. The few times he had been invited in -on the rare occasion Vivi’s family are away- had left him with ringing ears and a clogged nose. The layers of illusion, plastered over the house’s plain exterior, coupled with the wards, play havoc with his senses. A common reaction when supernatural creatures encounter ‘fox magic,’ Vivi had tried to reassure.

Ten more minutes of arguing and Vivi throws her hands up in frustration, grabbing her bag and stomping up the garden path, visibly irritated. Over her head, Arthur catches the eye of her father, who is glaring daggers at the van. His eyes narrow, flashing blue. Arthur doesn’t need heightened instincts to recognise a warning sign. Internally, he groans, sinking further, putting his head below the window, resigning himself to another ‘stay away from my daughter or else’ lecture. So far, the ‘or else’ was impending, but Arthur can’t help but worry every time he accidentally reminds the patriarch that he exists. It throws a damper on his anticipation like a bucket of ice.

The passenger door opens. Mystery leaps up into the van, giving him a perplexed lopsided expression. Vivi clambers in after him, throwing her bag over the seat divider in the same movement. A puzzled glance is given when she notices him almost on the floor.

“Your dad hates me.” He offers.

“Oh, ignore him. He’s got his head stuck back in feudal japan,” Vivi gripes, twisting to pull down her seatbelt, “Right Mystery?”

Mystery, who has seated himself between them, nods, projecting his voice, /Though concern for one’s progeny is natural, the fact that I am acting as your guardian makes his worry unfounded. /

“See. Mystery agrees with me.”

“Is that what that was…” Arthur mutters, starting the van up so he can drive away as quickly as possible. He can still feel piercing blue eyes ten minutes later when the Pepper’s diner, in all its bright pink glory, appears on the horizon. Anxiety and fear are quickly killing the rest of his excited anticipation.  Now, he is wondering whether Vivi’s dad has a point.

“He’s right you know,” Arthur blurts, unable to help it, “Your dad I mean. About me being dangerous. I don’t even remember most full moons. I’ve ripped up all the basement floorboards and destroyed whole walls before.” He had even hurt people, back when he and his Uncle had lived in the city, but he can’t bring himself to mention that failing. “The full moon is nothing like when we’ve all gone running together or shifted to mess around. What if I hurt you.”

“Arthur,” Vivi sighs, turning to stare at his profile, “We’ve talked about this. There is no way we are letting you spend any more full moons locked up in that thing you keep in the basement. Not when we have a better option. My dad can go suck on a lemon, because, curse or not, I’m doing this.”

“What if something goes wrong and you regret it...”

“The only thing I regret is that we didn’t know you were a bitten-wolf sooner.”

Arthur hyper focuses on turning off the motorway, face heating up. Honesty, Arthur hadn’t known there was a difference between him and Lewis’s wolf nature until an offhand comment about werewolves had Lewis commenting that the full moon gave him a crazy appetite. Vivi’s dad had been by to threaten him enough times that he had assumed Vivi knew he was a werewolf and not a regular shifter, but she had simply nodded along with Lewis, asking if Arthur had a similar quirk. Then Arthur had been too embarrassed to correct them. The full moon was such an unpleasant experience for him that he had avoided talking about it for years, making excuse after excuse.

/To go on a hunt with one’s pack is a common strategy when dealing with lunar-madness — one of the reasons you wolves tend to congregate in one location. / Mystery adds, voice calmer.

“Exactly. You’ll have Lewis. You get along great when you shift. Also, I wouldn’t be much of a fox if I couldn’t keep up with you two bumbling lumps.”

“Lewis is a regular wolf, and you’re just so tiny. I could easily hurt one of you,” He objects.  

/Fear not, Arthur. In the unlikely event that you do not recognise your companions as part of your pack, I will intervein and keep you and them safe for the night’s duration. / Arthur eyes Mystery and exhales to release tension. Mystery was so good at masking his presence that sometimes Arthur forgot he was a crazy strong spirit. According to Vivi, her family had once been his vassals, actual foxes, before marrying into human lines. It was where she got her shifting ability and instinct for magic. Arthur’s not sure how Mystery ended up disguised as a dog, playing family guardian to a bloodline who were once his servants, but he’s not about to question it. If the supernatural world was anything, it was convoluted.

“Arthur.”

“What.”

They’d pulled into one of the vacant spots outside the Pepper's diner. Arthur realises he’s been sitting, staring at his lap, in silence. Vivi’s leaning over, waving to catch his attention. She smells like paper, grass, flowers and that electric undertone he associates with magic.

“Don’t let my dad get you down. This’ll be fun. I know I’m looking forward to camping, and the full moon is only one night.”

“Right. Yeah.” His dour mood falls away. Vivi’s eyes are sparking blue, signalling her enthusiasm. “You’re right.”

A knock on the van’s glass window has both him and Vivi twisting in their seats. Lewis waves from the other side and Vivi quickly winds the window down so she can call a greeting.

“Don’t suppose I could trouble you for a lift,” Lewis jokes, holding his thumb like he’s attempting to hitchhike.

“I don’t know. Where are you heading, stranger,” Vivi returns, leaning out to grin. Arthur feels a smile return, and he clicks off the locks so Vivi overbalances when Lewis tries the handle. It is the breakfast rush, so none of the other Peppers have joined Lewis outside- too busy serving customers- but Lewis has a giant portable cooler at his feet, which is probably packed with their cooking.

“Hey, Arthur. How are you holding up?”  Lewis meets, attention moving off Vivi. His eyes flash gold, catching the light, and Arthur gets that additional rush of excitement reuniting with Lewis always inspires. Vivi called it a ‘pack response,’ but Arthur’s not so sure, seeing as he feels the same way when he sees her. Vivi's not a wolf after all.

“I’m fine,” This isn’t his first full moon, so the concern is a little unnecessary. He still finds himself pleased to receive it though.

“There’s space in the back for that. Hold on. I’ll get the back doors.”

“Thanks. I brought an extra tent as well,” Lewis continues, tracking him as he circles around the vehicle to open the back.

Vivi sticks her head over the seat divider to watch them, commenting, “Because two tents aren’t enough.”

“You can never be too prepared.”

“We have space. Why not?” Arthur reasons, reordering his and Vivi’s stuff to give Lewis room to load up his cooler box and mound of additional camping supplies. Of the three of them, Lewis has definitely packed the lions share.

Then Lewis hands them all sandwiches, correctly guessing that no one has eaten breakfast, and they hit the road. While he and Viv eat, Lewis drives humming along to the radio. Thoughts of Vivi’s dad fade into the background, Arthur simply enjoying being in the presence of both his friends. Even Mystery, who tended to be more reserved, is joining in their conversation, seemingly looking forward to spending time hiking about in nature.

Many people have argued that Luthien is a Mary-Sue; not just because of her beauty but because of how unbelievably perfect she was. What do you think?

Well. Personally, I don’t see how the idea that Luthien was anywhere near perfect came to be. As I was reading The Silmarillion, I noticed quite a few flaws in her character and was quite… pleasantly taken aback. Considering what I knew of her beforehand - that she was impossibly beautiful, and that she had some epic love story with a human man - I expected that I wouldn’t really like her. And oh boy, I was wrong.

Luthien is one of my favorite characters ever, and her flaws make me adore her all the more, far more than I would have were she really perfect and flawless as the general perception seems to be.

And of course, Luthien has amazing traits as well (traits of personality, not of power, although she was extremely, extremely powerful). Let’s begin with those and discuss them in detail; they’re important in this (kind of) meta because those flaws of Luthien’s are irrevocably intertwined with (most of) these traits.

1. She’s determined (as all fucking hell)

This one is pretty much a given for anyone who knows Luthien’s story. Nobody can ever tell this girl “no”, nobody, and if you try, she will, without fail, get your ass out of her way. Luthien Tinuviel is not here for your shit.

Her (overprotective and controlling but somewhat understandable) father? Not a chance. Magic hair-growing, activated. Guards? Put to sleep. Two unpleasant elf-princes who tried to force her to marry one of them? Bye bitch, she’s so awesome (and they’re so asshole-ish, let’s be honest here) that their hound decided to help her instead. Sauron “I’m-the-greatest” the Deceiver, Lieutenant of Morgoth, one of the most powerful Maiar in existence? No dice. Sleep-inducing magic: on. Huan: in attack mode. Sauron: ass-kicked, thoroughly beaten, and contemplating running the hell away (Luthien stops him, more on that below). Beren himself, wanting to treat Luthien like a damsel-in-distress and drop her off back home before he continues his quest? Luthien basically tells him, “Sorry, you’re stuck with me forever”. See quote:

‘You must choose, Beren, between these two: to relinquish the quest and your oath and seek a life of wandering upon the face of the earth; or to hold to your word and challenge the power of darkness upon its throne. But on either road I shall go with you, and our doom shall be alike.’

But Beren doesn’t stop there. In an (understandable) attempt to keep Luthien out of harm’s way, he sneaks off to continue his quest alone while Luthien and Huan are asleep. Luthien wakes up, probably rolls her eyes and sighs, and goes after him instead of leaving him to fall victim to his stubbornness. She sure loves the man, but she’s not taking any of his bullshit either.

Now Beren and Luthien are deep within Morgoth’s realm. Enter Carcharoth, basically the scariest, most vicious werewolf ever (and I mean ever). He doesn’t stand a chance of getting in Luthien’s way, either. This girl is not having it; she casts a sleep spell, and he’s out like a light. Then we have Morgoth, the ultimate Big Bad of Tolkien’s universe. Sauron who? This is Sauron’s boss. Sauron is afraid of disappointing this guy. Luthien doesn’t flinch. She dances in front of him and puts him (along with all his minions) to sleep through her awesome singing and the power of her magic hair cloak.

Then on their (remember Beren, the guy who accompanied Luthien? Yeah, neither do I) way out, Carcharoth, who is now pissed, confronts them. Drama unfolds, Beren’s hand is bitten off, and poisoned through the venom in Carcharoth’s (I’m assuming) teeth… and Luthien sucks it all out. No measly venom from the “greatest werewolf” ever is going to stop her.

Then more shenanigans. Then Beren dies. His spirit will travel beyond the spheres of Arda as Eru Iluvatar decreed for men, while Luthien, upon her own death, shall go to the Halls of Mandos and be reincarnated in Valinor. They can never meet again, for The All-Father Himself set separate fates for Elves and Men.

From grief, Luthien dies. She arrives in Mandos’ Halls, but not even death and fate are going to keep her from getting what she wants. She sings a song so beautiful and sorrowful that Mandos, the Vala of Death, for the first and only time in his existence (and keep in mind that Mandos is literally older than the universe), is moved from pity. See quote:

“Unchanged, imperishable, it is sung still in Valinor beyond the hearing of the world, and listening the Valar are grieved. For Lúthien wove two themes of words, of the sorrow of the Eldar and the grief of Men, of the Two Kindreds that were made by Ilúvatar to dwell in Arda, the Kingdom of Earth amid the innumerable stars.”

He speaks on behalf of Luthien to Manwë - my precious baby, hurt him and I will fight you - who then speaks to Eru about the matter. And Eru offers Luthien a choice: live out the rest of her days (which is to say, eternity, since she’s an elf) in contentment and bliss in Valinor, forgetting all of her troubles, or be granted a second life along with Beren, following him in death outside of Arda and losing all hope of seeing her family and friends ever again. Sounds daunting, yep? But Luthien opts for the latter. Even the prospect of eternity without her kin and companions isn’t going to stop her.

So, let’s recap, shall we? Things that have tried to stop Luthien and have learned from it the hard way.

Elwë Singollo, her father, an ancient and powerful elf-king

Celegorm and Curufin, two sons of Fëanor (and arguably the douchiest elves to ever grace the pages of The Silmarillion)

Sauron, no explanation needed

Beren, her boyfriend, attempts several times to no avail

Carcharoth, the greatest werewolf to have ever lived

Morgoth, basically the Satan of Arda, Sauron’s lord

Death/Fate

Don’t try to stop Luthien Tinuviel. You are wasting your time.

2. She’s brave (again, as all fucking hell)

I’d say anyone who defies their powerful father and runs away from home to save her boyfriend, and later accompanies him on a quest that her father literally intended to be impossible, is pretty damn brave in itself. But Luthien accomplishes some of the most notable feats accomplished by any singular Eldar or Man (the race, not the gender) in the entirety of Tolkien’s legendarium. And keep in mind that Luthien was most likely quite sheltered when she was growing up, considering her father’s personality. Maybe Melian opened her eyes a little, but I doubt she’s really gone anywhere. This is something we really have to take into consideration for perspective when we think about just how courageous Luthien is.

Despite her relative inexperience with the world, Luthien, after being practically kidnapped and held against her will by Celegorm and Curufin, a pretty traumatic experience in itself, and way more so for someone who has hardly been outside her father’s kingdom, rides straight for Sauron’s fortress (with Huan) to rescue Beren. It’s not certain if Luthien has heard of Sauron - presumably, she has, since he’s - well - Sauron, but I doubt she knows the full extent of his malice. Still, her mother is Melian the Maia, who’s most likely familiar with Sauron (and perhaps even knew him as Mairon), and I think Melian probably regaled her daughter on Sauron’s treachery and betrayal of the Valar, and his position as Morgoth’s lieutenant.

The initial first-hand warning sign for Luthien that Sauron is not a nice guy is the aesthetic of his fortress. I mean, this looks so welcoming:

But I digress. Terrifying fortresses are nowhere near the scariest things that Tolkien’s characters face. Then Sauron starts sending werewolf after werewolf at Luthien and Huan, and later, Draugluin, the oldest, biggest, and baddest. Now, considering Luthien’s sheltered upbringing (again look at Thingol, does he seem like he would let her have any interaction with werewolves?), I think it’s quite impressive that she didn’t lose her nerve at the sight of werewolves attacking her and Huan with the intent to maim and kill (well, subdue in the case of Luthien, but she probably doesn’t know that). But again, this isn’t too terribly noteworthy among Tolkien’s characters, so, while it’s pretty brave, it’s not exactly awe-inspiring in the context of the LOTR universe.

But then things escalate. After Draugluin is defeated, Sauron himself decides to show these little fools who’s boss, shapeshifts into a werewolf, and comes out to greet them. And Luthien encounters first-hand just how potent his malice and evil is: the force of frightens Huan enough that he leaps out of the way, and to Luthien herself, it knocks her out cold.

‘So great was the horror of his approach that Huan leaped aside. Then Sauron sprang upon Luthien; and she swooned before the menace of the fell spirit in his eyes and the foul vapour of his breath. But even as he came, falling she cast a fold of her dark cloak before his eyes; and he stumbled, for a fleeting drowsiness came upon him. Then Huan sprang.’

(Can I just say, about the “foul vapor of his breath”…? Sauron, brush your damn teeth, please. People will like you a lot more if you do. Trust me.)

Yet Luthien, once she recovers from Sauron’s mega-evilness, basically tells him, “Don’t be a whiny baby and sit your ass down”. Personally, after experiencing his malevolence first-hand and being sent into a brief coma by it, I’d be more than a little terrified to even look at Sauron, yet alone speak to him. Yet:

“Lúthien came to him, and said that he should be stripped (of his body)… and his ghost be sent quaking back to Morgoth; and she said: ‘There everlastingly thy naked self shall endure the torment of his scorn, pierced by his eyes, unless thou yield to me the mastery of thy tower.’”

I mean, this is pretty indicative of her mental strength and resilience, and by extension, her bravery. Even the elves of Finrod’s kingdom say, “a maiden had dared that which the sons of Fëanor had not dared to do.”

But that’s not all, nor is it the highlight. Far from it.

Later, Beren attempts to convince Luthien to go back home and leave him to complete the quest. And as stated before, Luthien isn’t having it. She tells him that whether he wants to forgo his oath to her father and elope with her or insist on finishing his super dangerous, intended-to-be-impossible quest, she will go with him. After all that she’s experienced for what seems to be one of the few, if not the first, time she’s been outside her father’s kingdom - which is to say, kidnapping, brushes with death, the evil of Sauron himself -  this is extremely courageous. The fact that she knows Beren’s quest requires him to be within a three-feet-proximity of Morgoth? And she declares herself willing to follow him? Doubly astounding. But it might also have something to do with all the shit she’s endured since she ran away from home - she’s probably not quite as naive to the world as she might have been. (Ooooh, character development.) Personally, I again think that the fact that she’s experienced so much in such a short period of time and hasn’t been cowed yet serves as both character development (better understanding that the world can be very harsh and deceiving) and speaks of her bravery.

After that, Luthien and Beren are minding their own business when Celegorm and Curufin appear out of literally nowhere and attempt to nab Luthien again (leave her alone for God’s sake). They come close, as Curufin actually manages to get Luthien up onto his horse. This is the Tolkien equivalent of being shoved into the car of the person who has deceived and kidnapped you once before, and is clearly attempting to do it again. This, combined with the horror of seeing that your other kidnapper is trying to run your lover down and squash him, is pretty damn horrifying. But then Curufin tries to shoot an arrow at Luthien and presumably kill her (though Huan intercepts the arrow with his jaws). If this isn’t scary enough, Curufin tries his luck a second time and would have succeeded in killing Luthien (or at least wounding her seriously), had Beren not stepped in front of her and gotten hit in the chest. Double, triple horror - in the span of a few seconds, you almost died, then you almost died again, but now your boyfriend is critically injured trying to save you.

So basically, the Jerkwad Duo’s attempts at kidnapping/killing Luthien are foiled, Huan chases them off (ha), Beren now has an arrow in his chest, and all the readers are smh-ing at Celegorm and Curufin, thinking:

After this drama, Huan brings Luthien herbs to treat Beren, and treat him she does, with those herbs, and with magic.

Fast forward to when Luthien and Huan are pursuing Beren, who ran off while Luthien was sleeping, in another attempt to keep her out of the fire line. Luthien and Huan, knowing they would look far too out-of-place going into Morgoth’s realm the way they were, (cosplayed) donned disguises of Thuringwethil and Draugluin respectively. Obviously, Luthien knows into where (Morgoth’s realm) she’s headed, but she doesn’t let that dissuade her from her mission (to help Beren). Considering Morgoth and all that he’s done, that’s impressive. I mean, if Sauron’s malice knocked her out, what might his boss be able to do? Yet Luthien remains undaunted. That’s brave.

Still not the apex of her bravery, though. Let’s continue. Luthien and Huan keep chasing Beren through a dark forest “filled with horror” that, like everything else, fails miserably in cowing Luthien. Once they reach Beren, Huan says he can go no further with the two of them, so Luthien, still (cosplaying) disguised as Thuringwethil, and now Beren, who is now (cosplaying as) disguised as Draugluin, since Huan’s absence leaves the skin suit available for him. The two go over deeper in Morgoth’s domain, probably once again facing a bunch of horrifying crap, if the comment that they endured “through all perils” is anything to go by.

Eventually, at the gate of Morgoth’s lair (fortress? Stronghold? Whatever he wants to call it), Beren and Luthien are halted by Carcharoth, who’s perplexed at the sight of them, probably squinting at (cosplaying) Beren and thinking “Dad?” (Draugluin was likely his sire.) Luthien uses the opportunity to reveal herself, which is kind of courageous considering where the fuck they are, and, as stated before, casts a sleep-spell Carcharoth.

Luthien and Beren then continue deeper into Morgoth’s fortress. I can’t imagine the kind of fear that they’d be feeling as they progress further, considering that they know their quest requires them to steal from Morgoth. (And Thingol is probably shaking his head violently back at Doriath.) But they keep going - again, brave - and at least, arrive directly in front of Morgoth, sitting on his throne, with his grotesque minions around him. And then this happens:

‘For they came to the seat of Morgoth in his nethermost hall that was upheld by horror, lit by fire, and filled with weapons of death and torment. There Beren slunk in wolf’s form beneath his throne; but Lúthien was stripped of her disguise by the will of Morgoth, and he bent his gaze upon her. She was not daunted by his eyes; and she named her own name, and offered her service to sing before him, after the manner of a minstrel.’

Beren, understandably, is cowed, but Luthien, who is “stripped of her disguise by Morgoth’s will”, remains unflinching under and endures the force of his gaze. I repeat: she remains unflinching under and endures Morgoth fucking Bauglir’s gaze. This is the origin of all evil in the universe, the entity that Sauron is afraid of disappointing. And Luthien stands her ground. Not only that, she tells him who she is and offers to sing for him, for the sake of distractions. Holy shit. This here is one of the most astounding displays of courage in the entirety of Tolkien’s universe - a girl traveling deeper and deeper into (basically) the Devil’s stronghold, being revealed before and facing him, who has so many people cowering in terror. And she stands firm. She retains who she is, what she wants, and acts upon what she wants, all as he stares down at her. She’s experienced Sauron, and he’s a servant in comparison to this guy. And still, she’s not deterred from her goal, which, I may add, includes thieving away something he treasures. I cannot emphasize enough how awesome this is.

And so, Luthien dances for Morgoth and uses her magic singing and her sleeping-spell-cloak to put him (and everyone around them) to sleep. Beren takes a Silmaril by forcing it out of Morgoth’s crown with his knife, but then attempts to take the rest as well. Very unfortunately, while he’s trying to remove the second one his knife breaks and a shard of it pierces Morgoth’s cheek. Morgoth starts to stir, and at that point Beren and Luthien quite sensibly nope the fuck out.

They encounter Carcharoth again, Beren’s hand is bitten off along with the Silmaril, and Luthien treats him (let me just gush over the fact that she sucked the poison out of a bloody, gaping stump again) and binds his wound, then Thorondor and two other Eagles rescue them just when it looks like Morgoth’s minions have surrounded them. Thank you Huan! (He asked his animal-friends to keep watch for Beren and Luthien and help them if need be.)

Then passes all craziness of the hunt for Carcharoth, and Huan and Beren’s deaths. Luthien, as well, dies of heartbreak, and as I stated before, sings to Mandos and manages to get herself a choice: live in Valinor in happiness for the rest of eternity or live by Beren’s side, become mortal with him, and follow his spirit beyond Arda upon their deaths. Now Luthien’s actions when facing Morgoth were brave, but here, I think she shows a different kind of courage in choosing the latter.

She’s leaving behind everything she knows, for the rest of time. All her life Luthien believed that even if she does die, she’ll be reborn in Valinor, and there’ll be an opportunity for her to meet her mother, father, and friends (Daeron was her close friend, she probably knew Galadriel as well, and considering Beleg and Mablung’s positions as chief of the marchwardens and chief captain of Thingol respectively, might have known them as well) again. If she chooses mortality with Beren, there will be none of that. She’ll literally have to exit the planet and leave all of her kin behind, never able to see them again, never able to reunite with them. She doesn’t know what lies beyond Arda, what awaits the souls of mortals - no one does. And even before death, she has absolutely no certainty that she will be happy. Perhaps she and Beren will fall apart and she’ll have sacrificed everything for nothing. But she willingly turns down the guarantee of eternal happiness, and chooses the uncertainty and pain that comes with morality, because she just loves Beren that much. And I think that’s touching.

To recap:

Runs away from home, alone, leaving it for one of the few or possibly the first time, in order to rescue Beren from the clutches of Sauron

Is not dissuaded from her quest despite the first major thing to happen to her once she leaves her father’s kingdom is kidnapping

Doesn’t give up her mission when faced with violence and blood and death for the (presumably) first time, when seeing Huan fighting the werewolves

Faces Sauron and the full potency of his evil and yet comes out of it relatively undaunted, going as far as to give Sauron some rather scornful “advice” (in warning him that if he runs back to Morgoth with his tail between his legs, Morgoth will be extremely displeased with him), then continues on her quest

Despite all she’s faced, firmly tells Beren that if he wants to continue his potentially suicide quest to steal from Sauron’s boss, she’ll do it with him

Is nearly kidnapped again by the same people who kidnapped her before, then almost dies, then almost dies again, then sees her lover shot in the chest right before her eyes, but still doesn’t waver

Endures the horrors of Morgoth’s realm without faltering

Remains composed before Morgoth himself and the rest of his monsters and dances while they’re all staring at her

Chooses to become human with no guarantees of happiness, and after death, pass beyond the spheres of Arda and face whatever comes afterwards, leaving her kin and friends behind forever, for the sake of Beren

So, Luthien Tinuviel - indisputably one of the most courageous and resilient elves to ever walk the face of Arda.

3. She has this remarkable ability to stay calm in terrifying situations

Once more, I emphasize that Luthien has probably lived a very sheltered life. Yet she remains quick-thinking in pressurizing moments. After she’s nearly been kidnapped for a second time by Celegorm and Curufin, who have already kidnapped her once, and Beren is dying with an arrow in the chest, Luthien still keeps her head on her shoulders and heals him. This either means that she has medicinal knowledge to be able to know which herbs she needs (more likely since you still need education to use herbs), or Huan knew himself and brought them to her (less likely). But in any case, the fact that Luthien had the clarity of mind to treat Beren in that situation is impressive. She not only needed to use herbs, but also had to use magic, and for a princess who’s not very experienced with battle and blood and death, the fact that she pulled it all off successfully is notable.

Then later, under the pressure of Carcharoth’s suspicion, Luthien is still quick-thinking enough to use his distraction to her advantage and put him to sleep. Keep in mind that not only are she and Beren under Carcharoth’s scrutiny, they’re deep in Morgoth’s sphere of influence. I image it to be something like the tension and nervousness of breaking into and sneaking around a serial killer’s house and trying to remain quiet, multiplied by a thousand. Personally I would curl up in a ball and cry, but Luthien remains fairly level-headed.

Finally, when Luthien dances for Morgoth, she, once again shows a shocking ability to stay rational in the face of utter terror, when most people lose their sense of logic. She uses Morgoth’s lust and dark appreciation to her advantage, using her magic singing and her sleeping-spell-cloak to put him to sleep. Never mind the fact that most people would be too scared to even dance or sing properly; Luthien actively schemes while being watched by the culmination of evil in Arda.

4. She shows surprising mercy

Amazingly, this isn’t discussed much, but I find it mind-bogglingall the same. In the second instance that Celegorm and Curufin attempt to kidnap Luthien, Curufin ends up pinned to the ground by Beren - and Luthien demands that the son of Fëanor be spared. Why is no one talking about this? Curufin (and Celegorm) has lied to, kidnapped, and held her against her will. They just attempted to do so a second time, and tried to kill her lover simultaneously. Yet she wants Beren to spare him. If it were me, I wouldn’t give a shit. In fact, I would cheer as Beren strangles the life out of that asshat. Don’t get me wrong, I do find Curufin and Celegorm to be nuanced and complex characters, but from Luthien’s perspective, these men have been nothing but liars to her at their best, and outright attempted murderers at their worst. I wouldn’t be too concerned with their safety or their lives if I were in her place.

To me, those are the four fundamental strengths, the beauty, of Luthien’s character. Yet all of these traits, except for the third one (ability to remain calm in tense and even terrifying situations) are juxtaposed with the fact that, when interpreted negatively, they can be considered flaws. Here we go.

Reason 1. Her determination = selfishness?

Perhaps not all aspects of Luthien’s determination can be considered selfishness. After all, we can hardly call her selfish for the inherent actions of escaping from her captors (Celegorm and Curufin) and defeating Sauron, nor can we fault her resilience and refusal to give up despite how potentially traumatic some of her experiences are. Yet all of these actions, as well as her running away from home, her journey into Morgoth’s realm, her dancing in front of Morgoth and putting him to sleep, and her decision to forsake the immortality of elves are incredibly hurtful and even insensitive towards the two people I think Luthien wronged most - her parents, Thingol and Melian.

I doubt I need to elaborate much on this. Luthien put herself in such mortal danger time and time again with her “determined” (in quotes, because, while they indisputably make her an extremely resolute person, it’s not supposed to be a compliment in this context) actions, and I can’t even begin to imagine how worried Thingol and Melian were. Perhaps Thingol more so than Melian, since Melian seemed to have some kind of foresight about Luthien’s fate.

But then again, maybe that would have brought her even more sorrow - knowing her daughter’s eventual fate. And imagine how Thingol felt, hearing that his daughter chose to follow Beren into a mortal’s fate, and that once she dies, he’ll never see her again. Ever. It’s clear through his controlling actions (imprisoning her in a treehouse) just how much Thingol loves Luthien and wants desperately to protect her.

One could interpret what was above called Luthien’s “determination” as egocentricity that spat in the face of her mother and father, especially the latter, who wanted so much to keep her safe. You could see it as a sort of, “They did so much for you, and this is how you repay them”? After all, she chose to separate from her parents for all of eternity, just because of her love for Beren. When things are taken that way, it doesn’t exactly paint Luthien in the best light; it makes her look selfish and ungrateful. So Luthien is indeed determined, but she’s also self-centered as well, in a way.

Reason 2. Her bravery = foolishness?

Like I discussed in (excessive) detail above, Luthien is brave. Like, seriously, awe-inspiringly, astoundingly brave. And while I think she’s very well capable of being clever in the moment, she doesn’t strike me as being particularly wise overall. All of her “brave” actions are surprisingly rash and have zero pragmatic basis. Why would anyone run away from home, alone and without assistance, to face Sauron? Her desire to rescue Beren is understandable, but she’s putting a lot at risk by going against such slim odds alone.

Time and time again, Luthien throws herself headlong at seemingly impossible problems and tackles them one by one. Time and time again, she manages to come out relatively unscathed, but never does she have any prior guarantee that she will. Even when she chose mortality with Beren, she had no certainty that they would remain together; that everything she sacrificed for their love might end up being pointless. Being an INTP, I find myself questioning that recklessness a lot. As amazed as I always am at her courage, I’m also reminded that, in my opinion, courage should ideally be balanced with logic, and most of Luthien’s decisions don’t strike me as being particularly logical. (If I could diagnose her MBTI personality type I’d definitely say she’s an xxFx.) So, Luthien is awe-inspiringly courageous, but may rightfully come across as very rash as well.

At the same time, though, Luthien may have been fully aware of the impossibility of what she was trying to do, but she felt that her father just wouldn’t allow her and Beren to be a thing. Therefore, from her perspective, she was doing the one and only thing that she really could do: take matters into her own hands, no matter how colossal the odds stacked against her were.

Nevertheless, the lack of practicality in her actions also ties into the next topic…

Reason 4 (like I said, Reason 3 really has no equivalent). Her compassion = naivety? (Kind of; at least, the more apt name is “Her bravery - again = naivety?”)

There’s far more to Luthien’s possible naivety then merely her sparing of Curufin, but nonetheless, it is important; this “compassion” nearly gets her and Beren killed. After all that they did to her, we have to wonder, why in the world did Luthien think that Curufin was worth sparing? Did she believe that everyone has good in them and everyone deserves a second chance? That sounds pretty naive (though arguably not so out-of-place with Tolkien’s narrative, where such notions of compassion and forgiveness are central themes).

However, this situation can be considered rather shaky grounds for indicating that Luthien is naive. We don’t know what transpired between Luthien, Curufin, and Celegorm when they held her hostage. Perhaps she learned a little bit about them somehow and recognized that they weren’t totally evil (not in the way Morgoth and Sauron are, anyway) and came to care about them, prompting her to demand that Beren spare Curufin. We don’t know.

But her “brave” actions, again, draw a fair bit of skepticism. Along with making her look courageous, yet reckless all at once, add naive to that list; Why is she doing all this? We get that she loves Beren, but does she seriously think that things will end all well and good for them? Usually the world rarely works the way we want it to.

You would think Luthien would consider that one of them might actually die trying to pull everything off. Perhaps this can be attributed, again, to her sheltered life; being an elf, surrounded by elves, and the daughter of a minor deity and an elven king, I seriously doubt that Luthien really understood the concept of death and just how final it is for humans - especially given that elves don’t stay deceased permanently. This can point to more naivety on her part; naivety that places both herself and Beren in danger.

Her decision between the Fate of Men and the Fate of Elves might also be something else that is indicative of naivety, for the same reasons that I noted above that they might be indicative of foolishness as well: Did she consider that she and Beren might not have a happy ending, even if she chose the Fate of Men? Did she think about the possibility that all of her actions might be in vain? Who knows? We have absolutely no insight on Luthien from her perspective; all we can do is speculate and interpret. Personally, I think she knew and was willing to risk it all, and I find that beautiful, but it may come across negatively to some.

One possible (quite morbid) interpretation for Luthien that erases her flaws of being reckless and/or naive, but serves to make her a much darker character and appear even more selfish, is that she knew exactly how little chance she had of succeeding in her quest, and how much chance she and Beren had of dying. Perhaps, she didn’t care. Perhaps, to her, as long as she and Beren could prove their love, it didn’t matter to her if one or both of them died along the way. Even this interpretation of her makes her an extremely heavily flawed individual, increasing her selfishness by a drastic amount.

That’s why, in my personal opinion, Luthien is far from being perfect and I don’t quite understand how the notion that she’s flawless came about. Personally, when I first read about her in The Silmarillion, she struck me as more of a child, a hopeful and idealistic girl, than a mature, adult woman. Sure, she’s insanely beautiful and has a level of luck that’s out of this world, but that doesn’t make her perfect (imo), not with so many flaws in her character.

There’s one last criticism of Luthien that I’ve noticed in the fandom: That her story begins and ends with a man (Beren), and that her entire character revolves around him. I disagree.

In my opinion, Luthien’s story begins in her father’s kingdom, long before she met Beren. She was sheltered and doted upon, and didn’t know much about the outside world. Her father was a powerful king, and her mother was a literal angel; they were both good parents and both treated her with overflowing love and affection. That was the world that Luthien knew.

Enter Beren, a scruffy, sweaty, vagabond mortal man from the outside world, someone who has endured a tough, tribulating life in the wilderness, betrayal, and the death of his father and his companions, someone who is being pursued by Morgoth. He falls in love with her, and Luthien falls in love with him. How exactly Luthien fell in love with Beren is never elaborated upon by Tolkien.

But in my personal opinion, imagine being in Luthien’s perspective, looking at this man - the first of the Secondborn that she’s ever encountered in her long life. Imagine how utterly fascinating he would be; at his (to her) young age, he’s endured more hardship than she, who was born into peace and privilege, can understand. He brings her stories about the world outside, a world that she can only imagine. And he’s kind to her. He’s in love with her. This man who has been through so much is in love with her.

Beren was Luthien’s first contact with the outside world - the real world, not the one that her father tried to keep her safe and sheltered in. He introduced to her just how dangerous and harsh it can be, but it was because of how perilous the world is that Luthien was able to develop as a character, overcoming hurdle after hurdle. In my opinion, that’s a part of why Luthien loved Beren so much. He connected her with the rest of the world and enabled her to form her own perspective of it, outside of where Thingol wanted to protect her. And I think that’s heartrending; he showed her the world, and she’s willing to give up the world for him.

I’ll tag my friend @martaaa1506 in this, because one of the few Tolkien topics we (happily and amicably, I still love her no matter what) disagree on is Luthien, and I want to hear things from a different perspective. 

Sing

Out of the 5 residents of Titans tower: Cyborg was arguably the most musically-inclined. Knowing all the lyrics to countless songs, he made it so that all other members of the team knew them too. However, another titan was also, arguably 'harmoniously gifted.'

Robin was treating Starfire to a date at the zoo, knowing how much her child-like curiosity loved seeing all the amazing and interesting creatures, earth had to offer. Cyborg was out of town visiting a 'contact.' It didn't take the world's greatest detective to deduce that 'contact' = 'date.'

Under the impression he had the tower to himself; Beast Boy took to the lavatory. An urge had hit him (No, not that kind) and he couldn't hold it back any longer, he had to let it out.

The green bean locked the door, dumped his purple and black doom patrol uniform on the laundry basket in a disorganised heap and twisted the faucet. Feeling the hot water trickle down his green skin; the wall of sound and steam the hot shower created, was heavenly. The excited teen stepped into the heated drizzle and began to sing.

"Sing, sing like there's no-body wat-ching. Sing, sing like there's NO-body wat-ching. Sing, sing like there's NO-body list-en-ing. Sing, sing like there's no-body list-en-ing. Sing!" Beast boy sang, gayly under the warmth and comfort of the downpour. Raven, who also believed herself to be alone in the tower, was taken aback by the sudden harmonious outburst. Her room was directly adjacent to the bathroom he was singing ever-so loudly and proudly in. The muffled noise was nothing but an unpleasant distraction to the Empath's reading of 'Myths of the nether-realm.' Promptly slamming her book closed, the sorceress decided to act on the matter by politely asking Beast Boy to shut the hell up. Leaving her room, the empath marched up to the bathroom and began to bang her fist on the door, loud enough for the changeling to hear.

"Beast Boy, I can't hear myself think! Could you pipe down for Azar's sake?"

"I feel like I'm sin-king, I feel like I'm reaching-" Gar was in the middle of the first rap-like verse, completely oblivious to any knocking on doors the empath was doing, by a combination of his own voice and the running water.

"Beast Boy!" The demoness exclaimed once more, to no avail. "Don't make me come in there, Garfield." She threatened, though hadn't fully realised the extent of what she had to just put forward. Even though she was the only one who heard herself, the idea of 'accidentally' seeing Beast Boy naked in the shower, made her cheeks flush redder than the ripest of tomatoes.

"NO-body LIST-EN-ING-" he continued to sing.

"Look who's talking…" she ironically deadpanned to no one, mildly amused with her sarcastic comment, enough so to warrant a tiny smirk to grace her face. She pondered for a moment; it was ironic that of all songs to sing out loud, it was a song about singing as if nobody were watching or listening, yet she was clearly listening, through no choice of her own, and was also contemplating 'watching' him in the shower… kind of. She audibly groaned. "Fine, if this is the only way to get you to shut up..." The empath swiftly teleported through the steel and other various materials and matter the bathroom wall consisted of, within milliseconds she was in the same room as Gar, naked, in the shower, singing his little heart out.

"Sing, sing like there's no-body watching. Sing –"

The sorceress glared through the copious clouds of steam, at the silhouette cluelessly gesturing behind the cyan shower curtain, attempting to scrub himself whilst 'dancing' to the song he was singing, as if he were performing on stage. She couldn't speak for two reasons: one, he might hear her and that would be a situation best to be avoided, two, when devoid of the disturbance and the muffling through the Tower's walls; Garfield Logan had an amazing singing voice.

Raven floated in silence. Floored, she just levitated, listening to him, well… sing… like there was nobody watching or listening. As far as he knew, that was the case. She was in awe at his hidden ability, stunned he hadn't let it slip somewhere down the line.

"SIIIIIIIING-" Gar held the note perfectly, he had reached the bridge of the song, the part with a beautiful choir in the background. He managed to sing parts of the song where there were counter-point melodies, switching between each melody with incredible precision, an impressive skill. "No-body… No-bo-dy... sing." He melodically concluded. After finishing reciting his current jam; the shapeshifter twisted the faucet, turning off the water. Raven panicked yet didn't deny that curiosity almost got the better of her: slightly wishing she could have seen Beast Boy completely exposed. However, she came to her senses and quickly teleported back to her room after her brief spying operation.

Landing on her purple, cushioned bed, she grabbed her book with haste to look as if she wasn't doing anything suspicious or out-of-character, just in case Garfield were to walk in for whatever reason. Still adjusting to the jarring change in atmosphere from the steamy bathroom to the cool air of her bedroom; Raven heard the distinct sound of the bathroom door unlock, open and then close again. Upon hearing the familiar thud of one of the titan's bedroom doors closing, the demoness eagerly put down her book, with a much different agenda now on her mind.

Saying he had piqued her interest, was an understatement. She had to know what song he had recited so beautifully. Looking up the lyrics she had heard from his lips, on her phone; eventually, she found it: 'Nobody's watching' by Hollywood Undead. She eagerly plugged her earphones in to listen to the original, non-BB cover. Just when she thought she couldn't be any more surprised today; the enchantress was blown away by how flawlessly he had performed a song he had no hand in creating. It also helped that she too was a fan of the song, having listened to it 5 times on repeat, now. Raven had decided on something: she was determined to learn the lyrics.

3 days later, the resident devil daughter found herself alone in the tower. Raven deduced that she needed to bathe. The enchantress floated silently to the bathroom, ensuring the door was firmly locked behind her. She removed her cloak, leotard and undergarments, placing them on the laundry basket in a neat pile. The empath outstretched her hand towards the faucet, prepared to feel the heat from the oncoming torrent. The room filled with immense concentrations of steam from the shower; Raven stepped into the aqua cascade.

The sorceress began to mix the shampoo in with her flawless, purple hair. She took a deep breath, trying to repress the butterflies in her stomach. She had spent the last 3 days learning the lyrics off by heart. She was confident. She was going to do it, nothing and no one could stop her.

"Sing, sing like there's no-body wat-ching. Sing, sing like there's NO-body wat-ching. Sing, sing like there's NO-body list-en-ing. Sing, sing like there's no-body list-en-ing. Sing-" Raven's singing voice was incredible, there was nothing quite like it. She hit every note with ease, immaculately reciting a song she had grown to love over the last few days. "-NO-BO-DY…sing." The empath proudly concluded, satisfied that no one was around to hear her performance. The now musically-inclined sorceress turned the faucet, shutting off the water. Stepping out into the foggy and silent bathroom; Raven was shocked to hear the silence broken… from outside. More surprising to her still; it was… clapping. It turned out: someone was listening. From the sounds of it; the demoness had a chromatically challenged fan club of one.

Shapeshifter whump ideas? Also what bands do you listen to? Xx

Shapeshifter whump, huh? Let’s see:

Well, first you kind of have to establish the parameters of the shapeshifter. So for this thought experiment, I’m going to say that this shapeshifter has a “base shape” that’s basically human. I’m also going to say that this shapeshifter cannot take the form of anything inanimate (so no puddles of water or anything like that). And I’m also going to say that they can’t shapeshift into anything too small (like a germ–I see you over there, Merlin). So basically they can transform into lots of different animals. Now, with those ground rules:

Keep them stuck in a particular shape–ideally one they hate or one that makes them feel vulnerable

In some werewolf stories, the werewolf starts to lose touch with their humanity if they stay a wolf too long. Make your whumpee start to lose their humanity and descend into animal instincts

Trap them in a “useful” shape–say, a horse or a dog–and then put them to work

Trap them in an interesting shape--dragon, mermaid, unicorn--and keep them around as a curiosity

Is shapeshifting tiring or uncomfortable? Make them do it a lot

Better yet, make them do it a lot for an audience–that’d be an amazing circus act: all the animals, only one performer, amazing!

Make them transform into, say, a bird, then put them in a small cage. If they try to transform back to a human, it’s going to be extremely uncomfortable trying to fit into that tiny cage

Likewise, say they’re in the shape of a fish. Put them in a tank with a locked lid. Now they can only transform into aquatic animals. Good luck getting out.

Collars, leashes, muzzles, and harnesses. Need I say more?

Keep the whumpee collared, leashed, muzzled, or harnessed even when they’re in their human shape–because, well, they’re really a beast

Those collars and things might be too tight when they transform back to their human shape...

Training techniques, of course, as befits whatever shape the whumper wants them in

Get your shapeshifter shaped like a horse and just ride them around. Ride them in front of their friends/teammates who may or may not realize what’s up (also, make them into a dog and walk them on a leash in front of their friends)

Make them transform and then injure them. Make them transform back to see where and how the injury transfers

Make them transform into something with non-analogous body parts. So make them transform into a winged horse, then injure the wings. Where do the injuries go on their human form?

Hell, amputate those wings from the horse and see what happens to the human form. And what happens when they try to transform later. I know “wing whump” is a fave around here

Keep them trapped in a cute shape and keep them as a pet. Antagonize them while they’re being kept as a pet because they can’t talk and can barely fight back

“What’s that? I couldn’t understand you. Could you say that again?” And the whumpee can only meow desperately

Take your mouse-shaped whumpee and make them run mazes or solve puzzles or just conduct experiments on them

Take your mouse-shaped whumpee and let your all-natural cat chase them around

Conduct experiments in general: how much human intellect remains present in a shape-shifted brain? This might require vivisection.

A whumpee who has forgotten how to be human now being encouraged to be human by teammates/caretaker and having a hard time with it

A whumpee who is newly human again after a long transformation persisting in certain behaviors learned while in an animal shape

Now, if your shapeshifter can turn into a puddle of water? Keep ‘em stuck in that form and drink ‘em. To paraphrase from Douglas Adams: “What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?” “Ask a glass of water.”

How’s that for some ideas? Have fun, Anon!

Bands! I like weird music, generally speaking. I’ll give almost any Eurobeat nonsense a listen if I need a pick-me-up. But I’ve been on a bit of a King Crimson kick lately, and Django Reinhardt is always good. Muse kept me going most of December. I will always love the self-titled Forest for the Trees album. I sometimes have a taste for both classic and new New Wave/80s-style music. I got hung up on Nico’s The Marble Index this fall. Nouvelle Vague is fun but you can’t take it too seriously. Sometimes I get too attached to meme music (see: “We No Speak Americano”). And I unironically like Yes.