Chibi Becile: The Rest of the Story
This is a summary for the plans I had for the blog. I’m sorry that they never came to fruition, but I wanted to get them out there in some form, for whoever is still interested. It’s long, but I hope you enjoy!
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The first thing that was supposed to happen after the hiatus was a commotion over in the camp. Another portal opened up and something is running wild! Oh no! What is it! Thadeus cuts it off at the pass!
It’s a baby elephant. All of the working men are immediately enamored, some of them saying she must be some sort of good omen. The rest of the joke is either Chibi protesting vehemently and then a smash cut to a fully built stable complete with name placard OR him slowly being worn down by sad faces and the elephant walking up to him and being completely adorable (including picking a flower up in her trunk and giving it to him, because shit might as well go full hog), and Chibi sighing and giving the ‘stern parent giving a child a puppy’ talk while also demanding the right to name her.
Either way, her name is Grace! I didn’t have a lot of plans for her but this scene was an absolute must.
This would’ve been catching up with the unanswered questions time.
Including a letter from Delilah! Holy shit Chibi is over the goddamn moon. He makes an important comment on how it takes more than two months for people or correspondence to make it all the way out here, so she might’ve written this even before he’d left the states. She talks about how regrettable the whole Incident was, and that she was disappointed she couldn’t get ahold of him before he’d left. And she was afraid she’d come down with a rather debilitating sickness… Chibi frowns…
And the panels start flickering to another version of Thadeus, also reading a letter.
… But she was going to make a full recovery. Chibi looks relieved.
The other Thadeus’ eyes widen.
She hoped he’d return soon—they had a lot to talk about. Chibi smiles dreamily.
The other starts to break down.
Wishing you well, wherever you are, Delilah Moreau. He holds to letter to his heart.
The other Thadeus screams.
(Quick interlude to say that these sort of flickering things would’ve kept happening, where they would be most ominous/interesting. They wouldn’t always show the same alternate Thadeus or other characters, but I didn’t have a ton of them planned. It was more like I’d take the opportunity where they came up, especially through askbox questions.)
Anyway, we move onto…
It’s evening, the campfires are going, the mountain range is outlined against the skyline and studded with lamp light. Thadeus stands at the edge of camp, staring, lost in thought. Eventually one of the hired hands, Jeremiah (the original test driver of the Elephant) asks if he’s come to a decision.
“…You know what? I think I have.”
He turns to his men.
“Gentlemen, we’re going to pay Mr. Babclock a little visit.
“Ready the Elephant.”
Next morning: Jurassic Park reference? Jurassic Park reference in Babclock’s office. The thing with the water glass and the footsteps? Yeaaaah boyyyy.
BOOOOOOM THERE’S A HUGE THUD FROM OUTSIDE. Everyone rushes outside to see--
The Great Elephant is sitting in front of the main mine entrance, its metal butt blocking the way.
Babclock is like, what. (I don’t know if he ever got a canon design but I always assumed he looked like the Monopoly guy.) And he looks up to see Becile standing on one of the Elephant’s tusks, looking very smug.
Babclock is like, what. What is this bullshit. Becile.
And Chibi’s like, OH we were just taking the Elephant out for a test run, and unfortunately we ran out of fuel right as we were passing by. Had to make an emergency stop, you see. Completely unavoidable. I’m deeply sorry for any inconvenience this has caused your company.
“If only we had some fuel…”
The shittiest shit-eating grin. What a little asshole. Babclock storms off and Thadeus follows. There’s a bit more of an altercation, to no avail on either side.
Meanwhile, out in the desert, another one of those blue portals opens up and some guy falls out of it. It’s kind of hard to tell what he looks like because he’s all geared up, goggles, protective suit and all, and a giant backpack. He gets up from his face plant and looks around, and upon seeing the mountains, does a double fist bump, like OH YEAHHH.
We see a hint of someone else coming through the portal, but then cut back to Thadeus. There’d be a bit of back and forth between answering questions (presumably some people in the askbox berating Thadeus) and seeing this mystery guy checking out the empty camp and making his way toward the mines, always with a hint of another figure trailing him.
Eventually, one of Becile’s men approaches him, like “Sir? Um, there’s a man who’s just arrived. He says he’s from the Cavalcadium, so I thought you would know…”
Thadeus is dismissive. “I haven’t sent for anybody, and if they’re here for me it’s no doubt to interfere with my plans.”
“Yes, right, sir, it’s just that he said he used to work with you, and uh, had some other choice words…”
“Hmph. Well I’ve made an enemy of most of the Cavalcadium, Misses Pomene and Verato included. But I can’t think of anyone who would come all the way out here—”
His back is turned to us when he stiffens, pausing as he realizes who it is, who it must be. What we see of his face makes it clear he is furious.
“Mr. Walter?”
Peter, the unmasked “”mystery”” man, looks up and takes a flask of water from Babclock. They talk a little about The Becile Problem, until a surprised look comes over Babclock’s face, looking past Peter.
Peter’s like, “What, is he right behiiiIOHH THAT’S A GUN”
Thadeus shoves the barrel of the shotgun into Peter’s stomach, and Peter just throws his hands up in surrender, not even taking the chance.
“What. Do. You. Want.”
“C-Can we have this conversation without the gun? Please?”
Thadeus is silent.
“I mean what am I gonna do, say bad words at you? I’m not exactly armed, here—”
“Whatever you’ve come here for, Walter, there’s no point to it. I’m not giving up my work, and you’re the last person whose opinion I’d consider. I don’t know what Pomene and Verato were thinking sending you to talk to me, but—"
“Oh no, no no no no no nnnoooo, I am NOT here to talk to you.
“That’s HER job.”
Cut back to Chibi, confused. And behind him, under a parasol and looking rather displeased, is Delilah Moreau.
OH NOOOOOOOOOO
So Chibi’s pretty blindsided, just kinda staring, awkwardly smiles and is like hello!
GLARE
He wilts, eheh, puts the gun behind his back as if that’s going to help him.
I think at that point Delilah just points to a tent and goes in, expecting Thadeus to follow her, which he would (after a sour look at Peter). I never figured out exactly how that conversation would go down… But it doesn’t work. Thadeus is still determined to get at the Rock Candy, but Delilah’s presence absolutely shakes him.
Speaking of Delilah, I did incorporate the vampirism even though it wasn’t part of the original plan! It was supposed to be a running joke that Thadeus was totally oblivious to it, even when she has glowing red eyes and fangs and sometimes fucking floats in the air.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Thadeus always calls Delilah ‘Miss Moreau’ to her face. This comes back later.
Another thing Thadeus wouldn’t notice but the audience might is that Peter doesn’t act flustered around her the way Thadeus does. She even teases him about it a little, which is met with a huff and a roll of the eyes.
Anyway, after Delilah’s attempt to talk to Thadeus fails, we see a very tired looking Peter talking to the air, bemoaning the situation. When he doesn’t get a response, he looks inside one of the bigger pouches on his backpack and finds it empty. “Uh oh.”
Thadeus, similarly, is sitting somewhere ranting/pouting. He even gets a little dejected until he notices a… scraaape… scraaaape… and looking over, finds a robotic head pulling itself toward him along the table, using its teeth. They stare at each other, Thadeus looking affronted and terrified. And the robot squints its eyes and lets out a warbling “RaaAAAabbiiittt.”
“WALTER WHAT THE F—”
It’s Rabbit!!! Probably actually takes the spot as Resident Cute Thing, sorry Grace. Peter is relieved to find her and scoops her up—he totally dotes on her, and insists on ‘she’ when other people say ‘it.’ She’s just, so fucking cute, just this bouncing toothy head that constantly appears in unlikely places and scares the shit out of Thadeus. And ofc, can only say variations of the word ‘Rabbit,’ my favorite being “Rabbuhbabbuhbabbit”
(Learning just how NOT a good dad Peter I was was kind of a nail in the coffin for this project—I am/was uncomfortable with writing something that was completely antithetical to the canon material, but good guy chibi Peter was going to be integral to the blog after he was introduced and I didn’t want to change the characterization I’d come up with… Not that it matters now, but for honesty’s sake I’m including this.)
Oh and there was a moment with Peter trying to make amends with Thadeus that I really liked. At one point an asker gave Thadeus some alcohol that he never drank, so I was gonna have Peter find it. He then approaches Thadeus and is like, hey, so, I know we left off on bad terms. What do you say we try and talk about this over a drink?
Thadeus looks at him, takes the bottle, looks at it, and smiles at Peter. Then he chucks the bottle out into the desert where it crashes against a big rock. Thadeus walks away from a disgruntled Peter saying that he’s welcome to the first glass.
What a little asshole!
Anyway uh
The portals
Unsurprisingly, Peter’s fault. He’d been tinkering with them since he discovered Blue Matter (which Thadeus is like, you stole the name of my shit?), and once word got back to the Cav that Becile was skulking around the mines, Pomene asked/ordered Peter to try and bypass the like two month journey. Delilah, after “miraculously” “recovering” from her “illness,” pushes her way into the endevour and is like you all know I’m the only person he’s going to listen to and sending Peter there alone is a terrible idea. Peter’s like, yeah that’s all true but I also don’t want you to get cut in half by these portals that I barely understand yet.
Delilah’s like PETER I’M A LESBIAN
what
A LESBIAN PETER, I WILL NEVER MARRY YOU and if that means you want nothing more to do with me then fine, but right now stopping Thadeus from making a huge mistake is more important, so if you’ve ever trusted me let me do this!
Peter’s like
…
I’m going in first. You follow ONLY if I make it through OK. If something does happen, you leave the equipment and make the rest of the trip there by land. Deal?
Deal. Also I’m a vampire.
Yeah I noticed.
SO they had been working with the portals, trying to get to wherever-the-fuck. The side effect of this was the opening of other portals, some to other universes, some just to different places in the chibiverse. The kicker is the portals aren’t entirely random—they naturally connect people who already have an emotional connection, whether that be ‘I’m another version of you’ or ‘You’re someone I care about deeply.”
And because Peter brought the device with him, this would be my excuse to bring in more characters.
Including one unexpected encounter with Iris Tonia, who would shout at Peter that there are portals and shit appearing all over the manor and he’d better do something about it. And he’s like clearly smitten, which causes Iris to blush and be like close this portal and get back to work. Delilah is just grinning ear-to-ear, and Thadeus is like, I don’t get it? Delilah’s like, they’re y’know, wink. Thadeus is like, no no no, that’s impossible. Peter and I have been competing for your hand for years now, even if he were to give up on that he wouldn’t just throw himself at another woman. Delilah’s grin gets wider and Peter’s like, um, yeah, y’know, uh, welllll……..
Thadeus just stares……………….. you. dog.
OTHER CHARACTERS include Marylin Verato and Jaquelyn Pomene, the founders/heads of the Cavalcadium. They, like Iris, wouldn’t have been summoned intentionally. At the very least, we would’ve popped in on them in one of their offices, and upon seeing Thadeus Jaquelyn would’ve been like, you. Thadeus responds with close the portal close the portal! Trying to rip the controls out of Peter’s hands. I had some ideas for bringing them over, but it was all based on headcanon stuff—like Marylin being the more magically inclined, kinda breezy, clairvoyant and stuff like that, with Jaquelyn being more hot tempered and down-to-brass-tacks.
There was one character I really wanted to bring in, though I was unsure how she’d be received. That would’ve been my OC, Alraune Reiniger, who had a very dark and tragic story originally but everything is better in chibiverse. She’s a German immigrant with schizophrenia and Thadeus’ accountant by virtue of being a ‘human calculator*’; she’d been in charge of the finances for most of his larger creations, so they had a solid working relationship. But it’d be clear that she had feelings for Thadeus that he, in his preoccupation with Delilah, was totally blind to.
(Thadeus at one point tells her she should take classes on the higher forms of mathematics—she would be phenomenal if she honed her natural skills. Which brings on the blushies!)
As such, Thadeus would totally be shocked that she was ‘randomly’ pulled here, but then is almost like, a little braggy? Like ‘look at this super smart person I know, she’s cooler than you Walter.’ The fact that the portal connected her to Thadeus at all would’ve tipped off Peter and Delilah. Delilah would go starry eyed at the realization that there was A Lady that might help get Thadeus out of his obsession but find it generally frustrating that he was so freaking oblivious.
Also her going up to Alraune, taking her arm and being like, I’m your new best friend.
Alraune, icily, is like, “I zink you are very confused.”
And Delilah’s like, you might not like me, and you don’t have to, BUT I’d be happy to see Thadeus go to someone who really cares about him, AND I can tell you what HE thinks is romantic.
Alraune’s like…….. go on
Anyway, Alraune’s readiness to admit her crush would’ve probably depended on the way askers approached her; I figure a bit of denial, a bit of embarrassment, eventually an admission that he’s a bit of a ‘butterface’ but damn, those shoulders? Like dude built the giant robot elephant, carrying metal beams and shit. But more importantly he’d always be respectful and appreciative of her, and when you’re a female immigrant with mental problems in 1896, positive feedback is in short supply.
Also there’d be a running gag of Thadeus responding to particularly suggestive asks by shooting them with the shotgun, and eventually he teaches Alraune to shoot for that exact purpose. (They totally do the sort-of-hug-while-teaching-her-how-to-aim thing and the gun would knock her back into his arms. Because I’m a shmuck.)
Now technically this next part would’ve been asker triggered, but I would’ve tried to bait them into it/hoarded the questions I needed. What I needed was enough people to be like ‘heeey lovebirds’ ‘alraune has a crush on you’ ‘thad and ally sitting in a tree’ and that kind of shit. Put all those in one post together and have Thadeus blow up a little.
“Now that’s more than enough out of you lot! Ms. Reiniger is a respectable woman who deserves far better than to be painted as some sort of rouged vamp. Our relationship is purely professional,” and so on. Alraune in the background is flattered by him ‘defending her honor,’ blushing a little, it’s cute and probably adding fuel to the anon fire. Unfortunately, that’s when Chibi takes the shotgun and shoots himself in the metaphorical foot.
“After all…
“Why would she?”
“A romantic relationship is ultimately a partnership, one the depends on both parties being equally suited for the other. Many people reduce this down to mere physical attraction, but a successful union requires much more than that. Temperaments must be complimentary. Both must have the moral fiber to do right by each other without question. And perhaps most importantly, the two must be intellectual equals. Shouldn’t partners be able to carry on conversations in which they are both equally educated, challenging each other, yet on par?
“I have the utmost respect for Ms. Reiniger, but the fact is she belongs to her social sphere and I to mine. It simply never would work out.”
Smash cut to Peter and Delilah staring in utter mortification, and back to Thadeus with a dotted outline in the air where Alraune was standing.
(Delilah might smack him, too.)
There’s two guards sitting next to the opening to a mine shaft and smoking cigarettes. Let’s call them… Tony and Frank. Because they are definitely 100% the guys that would, if this was another AU, become the Becile Bots, and they were going to cameo a lot once the setting moved over to the mine. Anyway, Tony kind of stumbles to his feet when Alraune runs toward them.
“Woah, uh, hey, lady. You can’t be up here—this is a restricted—”
Alraune clocks him dead in the right eye, laying Tony comically flat. She bolts into the shaft.
Frank’s like, “Huh. Good arm.”
“OH MY GOD STOP HER”
Frank runs after her, Tony picking up the rear. But by the time he catches up, Frank’s standing in another opening, looking dismayed They’ve made it to the Atrium—the central hub of the mine shafts, with dozens of paths to go down and only the sound of Alraune’s echoing footsteps fading away.
I pictured us skipping directly to this next scene, but maybe I would’ve stopped for a few questions here. Anyway, Next scene is a bunch of miners in the Atrium organizing a search party. Thadeus is there, looking uncomfortable; the miners are giving him the side eye and not standing next to him. If prompted, he’d admit that this is his fault and thus his responsibility to help find Alraune. (I’m not sure where Peter and Delilah were supposed to be, maybe I would’ve put them in another group?)
Before leaving, Thadeus turns to one of the miners, a young man that we’ll call… Jack. He asks Jack, “What are we supposed to do if we get lost ourselves?”
Jack stares at him for a moment, then smiles in a so-pleasant-it’s-creepy kind of way. “Don’t.”
Thanks Jack.
Alraune meanwhile has found a lantern and is still wandering. The regret has set in and while she’s still teary, she’s also kicking herself for running off and getting lost. Right now everything kind of sucks for her. Which means it’s question time! I thought we might pick her brain for awhile, hopefully get some questions that filled out her background and maybe even make her feel better. (I figured most of the askers would be sympathetic to her, since Chibi was a real asshole.)
Then Alraune is startled by something in the darkness—a monster with glowing green eyes?!—but it turns out to be a canary in a cage. She approaches it and sadly looks at the little bird. “Ah, hello little friend… We are both lost and forgotten down here, ja?” As she moves past it and the canary goes back into shadow, we see that, in fact, the canary does have glowing green eyes because Weird Green Matter Shit.
So I never planned out exactly how they run into each other, but Thadeus does end up being the one to find Alraune. Or maybe she finds him, idk. It’s not exactly a happy reunion—they’re both salty, Alraune can’t come forward and explain “I’m pissed off because I like you,” Thadeus is offended that she’s ‘overreacting’—but Alraune does agree to come back to the surface. If they can find it.
But before they can get out, they hit the motherlode. The two stumble into a huge, huge cave. I was thinking this hadn’t been discovered by Babclock’s men yet, but then they would’ve had to have found it through like, a cave-in? So maybe instead it was the mine’s biggest secret.
Sprawling across this massive cavern is the skeleton of a dragon, covered in glistening, glowing outcroppings of raw Rock Candy.
“…Are you cryink?”
“*sniffle* It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
So that was supposed to be the lore point explaining why the Rock Candy is here in the first place; this mountain was a dragon’s lair, and the Rock Candy was formed from the copious amounts of ectoplasm left in the spiritual plane by all the people that it ate. Thadeus is a whole bunch of emotions at once—thrilled, angry, awed—but Alraune is just tired. While Chibi is espousing all this science babble, though, she does pick up on one thing.
“So zis… stuff is made from dead people?”
“Well, yes, most of it. Not directly, but—”
“And zee, ah, nec—necor—”
“Necromantic properties.”
“Ja, zose give life to dead zinks?”
“That’s one way to put it, yes.”
“So…” She points to the dragon. “Why is zat not movink?”
Chibi has two reactions to this.
Firstly: Thoughtful pause. Then flat, “We need to leave immediately.”
Secondly (which might’ve transitioned better if an asker pointed it out too): “Wait. If the dragon should have been awakened by now… Why hasn’t it?”
And what comes after that?
Um. I don’t know. This part came around so late that a resolution never developed, let alone found a way to tie in to Later Plot. I liked the idea of there being a cave-in they had to outrun, including some of those flicker-to-alternate-selves shots and a mini animation of Alraune jumping a growing crack in the ground. They make it out of the caves alive; the dragon probably doesn’t wake up, at least not at this point.
Alraune does apologize to Tony, though.
“Um, sorry about zee, ehm… your eye.”
Tony puts his hand on Jack’s shoulder and points at him for emphasis. “Actually, can you teach ‘im to punch like that? Boyo’s like a noodle.”
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are.”
Now again, I don’t know how these two parts would’ve joined up if I’d done them both. There probably would’ve been at least an intermission for questions before this one started up, ‘cause this is the BIG one.
It starts off in Walter’s tent, where he’s dumped out his bag of Science and is setting up a makeshift workshop. Delilah is helping; Thadeus is criticizing. Rabbit is probably there, babbling adorably.
Thadeus notices something on the table and picks it up. “Wait a minute—Walter, how did you get one of these? This is a [made-up insane sounding science instrument]! I had to go to Germany to get mine, and it was the only one we had at the Cav—” He turns the instrument over. On the bottom is inscribed “Property of T.B.”
The tent goes very, very quiet.
“You took this from my lab.”
Walter cautiously puts up a hand. “That—makes it sound a lot worse than it is. Listen—”
“You drove me out and took what I had left.”
“No! They were going to tear down your lab at the Cav and take everything for shared use. I tried to save as much as I could for when you came back!”
“And you decided to profit off of it?”
Peter is silent for a moment. “It wasn’t doing anyone any good in storage.”
Delilah looks at him disapprovingly, but Thadeus cuts back in before she can say anything.
“So tell me,” he sneers, “Was it helpful to you? What marvelous breakthroughs did you make as a result of my expulsion.”
Another pause. “It…” He glances at the teleportation device, and Thadeus notices.
“This?” He snatches it off the table, furious. “A goddamn miracle of science—”
“Thad—”
“Because you stole from me—”
“Thadeus, put it down--!”
“Because you destroyed everything I had?!
“You know what I think of you, Peter Walter?!”
“THADEUS, DON’T!”
He throws the device at the ground, smashing it into the dirt
and everything goes
blue
Next post is sideways, left at the top, going ‘right’ to the bottom. At the top is the tent, with a shocked Delilah looking on and Peter desperately reaching toward the explosion. From there, the picture falls apart into ‘whitespace,’ with Chibi being blown out of his dimension and into the ‘space in between,’ symbolized by a transparent background crisscrossed with blue ‘branches,’ the other dimensions. There’s a sequence of him falling, some parts of the device trailing around him. And then he falls past a shadowy figure that makes a snide remark, something about getting out of there at the right time. But before he can process that, let alone respond, Thadeus smashes through into another dimension, flying horizontally until gravity brings him right down on his face. He blacks out.
What happens now? Well now it’s time for ~crossovers~!
I liked the idea of Chibi first landing in the Walter Kids universe, since they were at one point toying with sending them over. So of course Chibi would blearily wake up surrounded by these weird-ass children, and Rabble’s like “MOOOOOOM THERE’S A DEAD GUY ON THE LAWN”
“ughhhhh”
“I think he’s still alive, Rab”
“MOOOOOOM THERE’S A SEVERELY INJURED GUY ON THE LAWN”
Chibi’s actually not that injured, just totally out of it and with a sprained ankle. Luckily for him, most of the portal device actually came with him. After a bit of work and whatever shenanigans would’ve popped up, the device is in a working state; it can create portals, but the destination is unpredictable. Chibi decides that portal hopping at least has a chance of getting him home and takes off.
I figured we’d cross over with a few other Becile blogs and whoever else was interested; that wasn’t really something I could plan in advance. One dumb thing I wanted to do though was have him end up in the Becile Bots verse, but only run into The Jack. He’s super creeped out, especially when Jack calls him ‘Pops,’ and quickly retreats back through the portal. Eventually, he’d come back though, the curiosity too strong for him to ignore. Jack of course can’t answer any of his questions, so he’d settle for fixing up some of Jack’s loose parts and straightening his bow. Hare never sees him but is very confused as to why Jack is suddenly looking a lot better.
OH AND I ALMOST FORGOT, one important discovery Chibi would’ve made while travelling the multiverse is that the Rock Candy/Green Matter in his universe is significantly different than everyone else’s. Probably prompted by everyone talking about ‘zombies’ this and ‘melting people’ that. I picture him at one point going to pick up a piece about the size of his torso and he’s like, stretching and gearing himself up only to find that it weighs half of what he was expecting. Turns out? Even the Rock Candy is chibi. It’s significantly condensed compared to other universes, which makes it more stable to work with. It still does shit like give Thadeus sharp fucking teeth and extra green eyes, but at least in the short term it’s safe to work with.
So that’s nice!
Anyway the universe hopping would’ve gone on for awhile, until we ran out of interested blogs or it started to drag. Then we would’ve seen Chibi rapidly walking through portals, like here? Nope, bzzt, here? Nope, bzzt, here? Nope, bzzt, here? Nope oh wait there’s Chibi Delilah and Peter. Success!
Delilah, relieved, runs up and hugs him, telling him they’ve been worried sick and Peter hasn’t slept a wink trying to figure something out and… Are you crying?
He’s crying, hugging her back, dangerously close to breaking down. “Why?”
“I just realized… I might’ve never seen you again.
“… Delilah.”
At which point, he slowly kneels and asks her to marry him.
OH NOOOOOOOOOO
So that’s awkward. Delilah bits her lip and glances over at a mortified Peter. Thadeus chuckles self-consciously, admitting that it’s very sudden and this probably isn’t the best time, he can’t expect her to answer right away. But please, think about it, he says, pressing a ring into her hands before stumbling off, exhaustion overtaking him.
Peter walks up to Delilah. “You have to talk to him.”
“I know.”
I was never sure where this would come in, but I wanted to put in this explanation for why Delilah never directly turned these guys down. The reasoning I came up with was that originally, they were all just friends. Good friends! And Delilah really treasured that because she’d had a sad history of guys only being interested in her as a trophy and dismissing her after she turned them down. When things started to escalate with Peter and Thadeus, she had no way of knowing if the same thing would happen. So, frozen with indecision, she projected ambivalence instead. She doesn’t exactly blame herself for how bad the situation gets—that’s still on Peter and Thadeus being dingleberries—but she feels responsible for not doing something to dissuade them.
I’m sorry to say this part is pretty loosey-goosey. I never really settled on a climatic arc that I was fully satisfied with. Maybe that was part of what scared me away—all of that build up to a shitty conclusion would’ve been really disappointing to my readers and I didn’t want to disappoint anyone. But I’ll try to put things together in the order they probably would’ve played out in.
One thing I wanted to incorporate, especially if Marylin Verato ended up being a recurring character, would be this revelation about Peter. Marylin would be explaining her clairvoyance to Alraune and mention that it could manifest as ‘feelings.’
“Like, ehh, what is zee word… ‘intuition?’”
“Yes, that would be a good word for it.”
“… Peter Valter, he had very very good intuition, ja? Zat is vat people say?”
Leading to everyone staring at Peter, until Thadeus is like, “BULLSH(elephant censor)”
He is so angry about it, in his head that means Peter’s basically cheating (though it’s easy to argue that that means Thad probably has more raw skill since they’re about equally talented without him also having that power). I’m not sure if this would’ve gone anywhere except to explain how Peter keeps stumbling into incredible achievements.
One thing Peter does know is Blue Matter Shenanigans. And I think at this point the shenanigans were going to get worse. Portals would still be appearing even though our gang wasn’t using their device. When Thad mentions the mysterious figure he saw in the in-between space, Peter just. fuckn. Opens a portal, puts one foot on the other side so he’s half here and half there, and sticks his hands into the rim of the portal and pulls open a crack. And it seems. Stable?
“How did you know that was going to work??”
“Err, intui—uh, lucky guess?”
The three amigos make their way down into the in-between and confront the mysterious figure.
I had two versions of what they’d find there. I’ll start with the more half-baked of the two since it’ll be shorter.
In the half-baked version, there’d actually be two figures and a large machine that seems to be attached to the ‘vein’ that represents the chibiverse. One of them is the snide figure mentioned earlier, who seems to view the chibis with distaste; the other is more melancholy and vaguely disappointed with Everything. The explanation that eventually comes out is that the universes were starting to collide, creating this knot of intersections (which would’ve been pictured) that would eventually destroy all the affected ‘verses by merging them into a singularity. They were actually Brown Suits from the ‘prime’ universe sent to prevent this from happening.
(There may or may not have been a part where the Brown Suits aren’t truthful with the Chibis, and after being really amiable and cheerful talking to them, Peter does a dramatic reveal to Thadeus and Delilah that the Figures are lying. How does he know? ‘Intuition.’)
But that’s as far as I really got with that one; it was mostly concocted as a safer alternative to the original plan, the one I was afraid was going to fall flat…
In the original plan, there’s only one Brown Suit, the snide one. Her name was Yin and she was a Horrorian Kirin claiming to be sent by the Cavalcadium, but in truth she was an exile from the organization, kicked out for going too far in her handling of interdimensional problems. And her current agenda was Not Good; disgusted by the infinite ‘lesser’ universes that splintered out from the prime universe and feeling that policing them was a horrendous drain on the prime Cav’s resources, she was going to anchor as many as she could together and, using that connection, destroy them all at once. And this might not have been the first time she’d done it.
THIS was the cause of the flickering to alternate selves; the universes were overlapping, similar events on the timeline naturally gravitating toward each other.
And in true supervillain fashion, she couldn’t let anyone interfere with her plans.
I like the idea of Thadeus, upon saying something to really piss Yin off, gets kicked in the face and launched, football kick-off style, into another fucking dimension. While Peter rushes to help him, Delilah turns around and goes Full Vampire Monster Mode. Which is basically a giant bat-werewolf. NICE.
Or (possibly ‘and’) Yin calls Thadeus out on trying to be a hero, given nearly every other iteration of him including the original is a Very Bad Guy. What makes him think that he, a mere reflection of the real thing, could possibly be anything else?
“Do you know what happened to the real Thadeus Becile?”
And, invoking some overlapping dimensional bullshit, Yin appears to instantly break every one of his fingers.
Chibi crumbles, clutching his hands and nearly passing out from the pain. Peter pulls him out of there, presumably with monster!Delilah covering their escape. Lacking any medical resources of his own, Peter turns to the only place he can get help—Babclock.
Babclock looks down at them from his lifted office, Peter holding up a barely conscious Thadeus and pleading desperately. And after a bit of convincing, Babclock agrees to give him a room and supplies…
“But you need to do something for me, Walter.”
He agrees.
When Thadeus wakes up, Peter, Delilah, and Alraune are all sitting in the room with him. His hands are bandaged, but they tell him that when they examined them they were completely uninjured. He insists that the pain is there, even if the injury isn’t; it’s just as debilitating. What they figure (correctly) is that Yin used his connection to the original Becile to implant the memory of the injury. In theory, if he bucked the belief that his existence was defined by the original, the memory would no longer affect him.
But Thadeus is shaken. Especially after journeying through so many universes and meeting other versions of himself, how could he deny that connection? The others are at a loss as to what to say.
Except for Alraune. In a moment alone, Thadeus asks her, “Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Vat?”
“The weight of all this? Our inconsequentiality in the face of an infinite multiverse?
“No.”
“No?”
“No! I don’t care about ozzer Alraunes out zere, if zey are. Zey have nothink to do wif me! I’m the only ‘me’ here! All I want is the bullsh(elephant) to stop, a tall beer, and to go home.”
“… … …I suppose that’s one way to look at it.”
(originally she was going to say “hot toddy” but upon a little research those were more a British thing)
I think at this point Thadeus would’ve benefited from a little Q&A time, given he couldn’t do much else while Peter and Delilah panic over what to do. I’d hope there’d be some pep talks in there, at least enough to get him back on his feet.
So that he could push his way into Peter’s tent and refuse to leave, determined to Do Something about this whole universe-destroying problem. Whatever the plan was, his teaching Alraune how to shoot would’ve probably come back here. I never came up with anything more sophisticated than ‘rush Yin and break her shit’ (probably cuz I was focused on the upcoming Big Damn Hero moment) Thadeus would’ve refused to be left behind even though his hands were still a problem, so I guess the idea would’ve been that Peter and Delilah go in first, provide a distraction, and Thad makes the call on when Alraune shoots the conspicuously placed giant crystal powering the machine.
Naturally that would’ve gone wrong, and the other three pull back, only Thadeus refusing to retreat. Painfully, he grabs the shotgun, swinging it around in a last ditch effort, and takes the shot.
There’s an explosion, and Yin is gone.
And Thadeus is falling, unconscious.
Peter catches him though, riding in whatever contraption they’re using to get around in the in-between. NO BAD END
We cut to Thadeus waking up the next morning. The sun is shining, it’s beautiful outside—all the ‘new day new life’ symbology. Importantly, he has a moment to himself here where he looks at his hands and slowly peels off the bandages. He doesn’t need them any longer; he’s free from the shadow of what he could’ve been.
Not everything is coming up roses, however.
At some point, the Elephant must have been moved, because it’s gone from where it was sitting and the mine is back in full operation. It’s probably back at the original camp the blog started at. None of the hired hands seems willing to look him in the eye when he passes by. And when he gets inside, he sees why.
The Core is completely destroyed.
That was Babclock’s price for helping, and we see a flashback of Peter standing in front of it with a wrench in his hand.
While a little fury would be expected, given everything else that had happened, I don’t think it’d take Thad too long to resign to his loss. A shift in priorities, if you will. Maybe it was for the best it was scrapped; Babclock had proven he was never going to cooperate anyway. Though it meant he might never redeem himself in the eyes of the Cavalcadium… that would take longer to accept.
“Let’s take a walk,” Delilah says, taking Thadeus’ arm and guiding him away from the camp. They reach the Amibiguous Cliff Edge and sit down. Thadeus looks downtrodden; he knows what’s coming. Smiling gently, Delilah takes his hand, opens it, and presses the ring into his palm, closing his fingers back around it.
“You’re going to make someone so, so happy one day.”
There were a few ways for Delilah to drop the “hey dipshit I’m a lesbian” bomb, most of them kind of stupidly melodramatic and involving Thadeus reacting in a series of silently distraught panels. But if I did it here, it might go a little more like:
“… Ah.” He puts the ring away. “So it was always a fruitless endeavor.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop you sooner. I was just so scared of losing you and Peter—I thought if I kept ignoring it, you’d burn yourselves out. I didn’t want to think about how much it must’ve hurt you…”
“… No, it wasn’t your responsibility to keep us safe from our own stupidity. We all hurt each other. Perhaps it’s left best at that.”
“… I’m also a vampire.”
“… Well, yes, I gathered that.”
“You did? You never said anything.”
“Well, no. I thought it would be rude to draw attention to it.”
“Wait, so, that doesn’t bother you? I mean, that doesn’t change anything?”
“Of course not. You’re still the woman I fell in love with. What does immortality have to do with it?”
“…” She gently smacks the back of his head. “You’re a fool, Thadeus.”
“Mm. Well, I suppose I am that.”
Peter’s working on setting up a portal back to California. Thadeus tells his men to gather their things; once the portal is stable, they’re free to go home. Babclock offers to salvage the metal from the Elephant; sadly, Thadeus agrees, though on the sly he takes the largest piece of Candy from the destroyed Core and keeps it.
Thadeus also takes a minute to pull Alraune aside and properly apologize. What he had said before, about how people of different classes couldn’t maintain relationships… he’d thought his whole life that was logical, and he was honest when he said it. But it turns out you can believe, without a doubt, that you’re right and still be wrong (he says this with a look at the Elephant).
Alraune regards him guardedly for a moment before, still a little bitter, asking if this means Ms. Moreau finally turned him down.
Thadues looks away and nods.
Alraune is quiet for another moment, then says she is sorry. She knows how that hurts. But she knows he will survive and find a good wife someday.
She turns to go, and Thadeus stops her. When they get back—well, she’ll probably be very busy, she was pulled out here without any warning after all—but if she ever had any time, perhaps they could—meet at a coffeehouse or visit the library—something to stay in touch and get to know each other better… as friends.
‘Friends?’
Thadeus hesitates. After seeking Ms. Moreau’s hand for so long, no, he wasn’t ready to just jump into something so quickly. But she, Alraune, was an amazing person herself, and he had already lost so much… it’d be nice to still have a friend in her. So he couldn’t promise her anything…
… But it wasn’t a ‘no,’ either.
(now kiss, damn you)
And we’re finally wrapping up. Any last questions, maybe some hints of what would happen next—Peter might get the idea for some more robots for example. That kind of stuff.
Oh, and we have to take care of our most precious underutilized asset, Grace the baby elephant. Thadeus hems and haws over what to do with her, but it’s eventually agreed it’d be irresponsible to bring her back to the US. Peter thinks he can reopen the hole she can through—after all, space-time is a ‘fabric’ and This Is His Thing. I’m sure this would’ve been more meaningful in actual execution, but Thadeus pats her on the head and tells her to be a good girl, and Grace gets to go home to her family.
And speaking of going home… everyone is now. The portal to the Cavalcadium is open and stable, for now. No time to waste. The men are shuffling through; the named cast hangs back, waiting to make sure it works. And then Chibi remembers something. He’ll be right back. (Alraune looks a little concerned. He smiles and nods, promising.)
And he walks away from the portal to talk to
Us
And he smiles and says he can’t believe we stuck with him through all of this. Even when things were at their worst. What the devil made you stay?
Thank you.
It’s been an honor.
And though this might be the last you see of each other, he wishes you all the best, across every universe.
And he lifts his hand in farewell.
And turns back to his friends.
And goes home.
fin
