In Finem Omnia

[kryptophysics]

Avatar Backrooms, 3/?

The third and last of the opening hunt chapters. The very next chapter takes us right into the backrooms, I swear, LOL there'll be a hair-raising adventure there later.

I finished the 12th chapter earlier; it's posted to AO3 and FF.NET

03 - The Salt

“Nah,my father’s not coming back until June,” Spider shuddered, “then … he’ll take a month off to waste with his crew. If I’m lucky. He’ll rope Norm or Jake or anyone else to watch me for the summer. If I’m lucky.”

“Oh, bro, how bad is it?” Yammy teased.

They worked at the cellar where portions of meat were preserved with salt. The boys packed the cuts. The girls poured salts and herbs into the coolers.

“It’s not that he’s a slave driver. He doesn’t go through everything I do like a drill sergeant. It’s that … oh, god, how do I say this? He tries to relax except he can’t. He’s always got his crew. They do the work. What ever it is. Hunting? They do the hunting. You know what I mean? He just tells stories. When Jake is there it’s always about Venezuela. Special Ops. Afghanistan. Iraq. And I’m a fifth wheel. I never know. Where I go? Where I stand? Like, what am I doing there with them? Oh, guys, the kid’s here. Wainfleet tries to tone it down. For a while. If I had my way, I’d go with Norm to Lake Trinidad. There’s trails I want to hike along the plains.”

“We’re off to see my dad’s folks,” Yammy smiled. “That’s our summer.”

Spider chuckled: “The crazy Sullys who don’t like their pictures taken? I remember them.”

“Yeah, the Dragon Duo.”

Mrs. Sully hissed at that: “That woman’s not a dragon lady. I’ll show you a dragon lady one of these days.”

Spider smiled, turning to the brothers away from the woman who filled that cellar just by setting foot into it.

TukTuk grabbed a tub of salt; that pail had to be nearly empty by then; she poured it too fast into the cooler. A cloud of dust spread over the table. Salt dust…. The kids covered their faces with their shirts. Spider’s was … bloody … so it was off – he used his arms to wrap his face. As the salt settled they coughed then itched. It passed quickly, though.

That’s when Cici noted how the salt dust settled onto Spider’s arms. As thin lines – lines like contours. Stripes. It wasn’t like that with her skin. Or TukTuk’s. Or Junior's. Then Yammy developed those stripes everywhere substance spread over the skin.

“That’s weird,” she said of it. “They’re … kinda, sorta the same, aren’t they? Those stripes you've got.”

“The patterns?” Spider tried to brush it off – as Yammy tried – but the salt was stuck to their skins. Brushing it didn’t get rid of it. Just shifted the salt onto other parts where that formed other stripes. “That is weird, cuz? What did we get into?”

“Static,” Tiri said not the least amused. “Outside. Wash it off.”

She followed the boys to the faucet outside – and watched them apply the water to dissolve the dust. It wasn’t enough. She applied a bar of soap too. To Yammy’s face. To Spider’s arms. Forcefully until not a trace of the stripes was left.

“It’s an irritant,” she said of it. “Don’t scratch.”

She inspected them where so ever their skin had been exposed then stepped aside without a word.

“That was strange wasn’t it?” Spider grabbed Yammy and drew them into his arms – still wet and cool. His chin dropped to their shoulder as their hair swept across his face. Together they seemed to sway as if jostled by the air. “I’d do anything to spend the summer with you. Just with you. Imagine that? What it would be like for us?”

Yammy shut his eyes and smiled – and sighed deeply, longingly enough to shake the boy who latched onto him as if life and death depended on it.

“In the silences. In the spaces … where nobody sees us … where nobody hears us. It’s those stretches of time between, between everything happening and not happening, that’s where we are, isn’t it? Ma monkey. Imagine, if …. Hey,” he separated a bit and stroked the boy’s curly, blonde locks. “Tonight. Let’s hike up that hill with that tower. Let's see what's up with that, huh?”

“After dinner,” mom interrupted them – and they jostled only to laugh into each other. “Eat. Then you may walk.”

“I’ll take it, Yammy. A long walk. Anywhere. Don’t matter. A stroll through the stars. How about that?”

“Through the stars … hm … a date’s a date.”

End of Chapter

Link to Chapter 02

[kryptophysics]

Varang's Going To Make You Pretty

from 'Reflections of an Ash Desert', Chapter 1

Story Summary: Jake and Miles strike a custody deal to keep the peace between them and by extension Pandora: they're going to share Spider. Every half a year Spider has to switch between Jake, Neytiri & Miles, Varang. Hijinx ensue. Spider is gay and explores this aspect of himself when living with the mangkwan. The story assumes that the events of Avatar:Fire & Ash happened slightly differently. The details of this divergence are revealed as the story progresses.

written for Just Write June 2026; all 28 prompts will be chapters

Chapter Summary: Spider wakes up in a daze inside Varang's yurt after his father drops him off to live with the mangkwan for a while. He meets this warrior whose about his age and, um, sparks? Maybe? I donno....

Just Write June 2026, Day 1, Accidental Coming Out

Chapter 1 "Varang's Going To Make You Pretty" (rated T)

The fire that awoke Spider extinguished into a thinning, dancing stream of smoke.

She’s mixing ash?

Inside the yurt, the light dimmed except at the gaps of the seams through which sunrise bled. Across the tent, crouched at the crucible, cloaked by the shadow, the mangkwan witch worked. She mixed ash – the remains of the fires – with powder to form a bloody pigment. A breeze stiffened and rattled the totems. The pigment glowed as if feed by the air. She turned, angling her face, curling her lips to smile. A wicked smile. That stopped the heart.

She’s looking at me?

Oh, Eywa!

She chuckled: “air breather!”

The blanket wrapped his body. It felt tight and heavy. Like lead and perhaps it may have been so. The mangkwan forged their gear from metal. They used metal beyond what any other na’vi would have dared to. The witch would have fire proofed her bed, right? Right? Lined with a ghastly amalgam of elements to make the RDA blush.

Or was it nerves?

It was nerves….

A warrior of his age walked into the yurt. The body thin. The limbs long. They swayed; even the kuru and the tail swayed. They were ashed white; everywhere; with a thin, red stripe from chin to waist. They had to be somebody. Maybe the olo’eyktan? They were familiar although he couldn’t say when or where or how he’d seen them. Ah, they had been there that midnight his father dropped him off in the village. They had cut his bindings and slapped away the spears of the warriors that had met him during his perpwalk into Varang’s yurt.

The wind’s howl muffled the conversation between the warrior and the tsahik.

Spider peeled out of the blanket. He must have been drugged that midnight he was delivered to Varang. The fog was lifting, fading. And as the sedative passed, more and more of reality slipped into view. He had been painted – white by ash – and roughly. His skin wasn’t blue or striped or luminous so the cover was light. The strokes were streaked by the artist’s prints. Completed by the artist’s seal, a black handprint pressed onto his chest. A reverse of her ‘eye’.

“Wake.”

A statement?

A threat?

Spider gawked at the yurt’s center. It was the warrior not the tsahik who spoke. The youth’s voice echoed Varang’s gravel. Even the way they moved as they moved to him – how the hips and the tails swayed – matched that of the dark tsahik. The sight of that took the human’s breath away. He froze unsure of what to do.

Like Lo’ak, the warrior had to be his age only taller. They knelt at the blanket, legs and arms spreading, body sinking as if to join him at the bed. They came to within inches of the human’s virtually naked, totally ashed body – then – started an onslaught … of poking.

“Wakey! Wakey! Air Breather.”

Spider tried to slap away the hands but they felt as if thousand were launched at him. It went that way, with the warrior tickling and the human squirming. He realized they were working him closer and closer to the edge of the bed. Until he returned the gesture. His efforts, though, only elicited laughter.

They tussled until both tumbled onto the ground.

Laying then sitting between a totem of skulls, they stopped so as to not disturb the furniture. Spider didn’t move and didn’t realize that in their ‘fight’ that strip of cloth the mangkwan enforced upon him slipped and exposed him. Only the warrior noticed that accidental outage.

“Don’t fight, Spider,” he spoke the English. Slowly, they leaned, eyes and hands up. Their smile vanished. “Sorry. Don’t fight. Sorry.”

Strangely, the warrior didn’t pose a threat.

They reached and tugged that strip of cloth – and it covered the human’s genitals.

Spider’s eyes gasped at what he realized happened.

They clasped his hands, four fingers zippered into five fingers, a contact between species that lasted blinks yet endured breaths.

“Look.” Quickly, they shifted their loincloth.

Spider wasn’t a stranger to the shape or the function of na’vi genitals of either sex. The omatikaya left little if anything to modesty. He, too, wasn’t as bothered as the RDA. Still, until the warrior exposed himself right there, right there – in Varang’s yurt – he hadn’t witnessed anybody of his age be so … so erect. He suspected it should be like that. Like his, but, bluer, stripier, longer, thicker…. The tip swelled into a shape that he thought was … beautifully … sleek. Different, to be sure.

The warrior tapped their tip to bounce it – they made a sound as they did so – he chuckled at the effect.

“Like yours, see. I get a show. You get a show. We’re the same, the same,” he laughed.

“Yeah,” it was Spider who covered the warrior. “I gotta step outside.”

Beyond the yurt, the village stirred. Life started early even for psychopaths. Tents dotted the desert the mangkwan settled into. For a while Spider thought about … walking and walking … and running away. Except that would have upset the balance.

Ahead, the volcano glowered against the stars of the skies. Its peak sparkled a shade of violet – a sight that conjured as if by magic a reflection of the warrior’s anatomy. By chance he saw many, many things. That had been the very first time that a boy intentionally showed themselves. Willingly. Eagerly. God, it didn’t even matter that they could have been caught.

It wasn’t to be yet Spider fantasized that Lo’ak showed him that. Or, oh Eywa, oh Eywa, Neteyam…. They had come the closest to that so, so many times. In the depths of his heart he’d wonder just how far they might have gone.

He returned into the yurt and caught the warrior tidying that mess at the tsahik’s bed.

Spider grasped their hands as they worked. Why? He didn’t know. It was the strangest, wildest urge. He didn’t know what else to do except that he didn’t want yet another connection to slip the way he let the boys he loved slip. He used that bed as a step then kissed the warrior’s cheek.

They smiled, ears twitching.

“Did you mean that?”

“Yeah, um, you mad at me?”

“No.”

It may have been the most normal interaction Spider had had with any mangkwan.

“Come, Air Breather, you’re one of us. Varang’s going to make you pretty.”

End of Chapter

Link to r/AO3 Just Write June 2026 Collection

Link to Reflections of an Ash Desert at AO3

[kryptophysics]

[kryptophysics]

Avatar Backrooms, 2/?

The first chapters involve a hunt and its aftermath; this is how Neytiri tries to instill her na'vi ways to her kids even though they live as humans on Earth (oh boy it's complicated). We move to other destinations soon enough.

I'm working on the 12th chapter today; hopefully to post it by Tuesday or Wednesday.

Don't worry too much about OCs that appear from time to time; except for the obvious references to Aliens (and maybe Terminator?) any OCs that appear are for filler.

02 - The Unspoken

They split into two ATVs. Tiri and Spider took the front with Spider at the wheel. Cici and the brothers took the back with Cici at the wheel.

Mrs. Sully wasn’t keen to drive. She would have been content with Yammy over Spider at the ATV’s wheel. That was the custom she settled into when Jake wasn’t there. But Spider was of that age when he would have driven Yammy. Even if she wasn’t there to watch. Especially so. And she wanted to ensure that any driving in any vehicle in any setting was done to her liking. So to that effect she taught Spider not unlike how she taught her sons. With growls…. It kept Spider frosty at the edge of the seat.

Strangely, that day’s five mile drive to the hunter’s lodge elicited nothing from Mrs. Sully.

“They’re OK,” Spider said of it – the unspoken.

“Eyes. Trails. Boy,” she said, softly. “And how do you know of OK, huh?”

“They’d say something,” he replied. “My dad’s there. They’d tell me. Norm. Selfridge.”

She made a sound like a word – he couldn’t say what it was.

“Sometimes, I wish he’d stay at Isla.” Tiri’s eyes almost darted out of her skull. “My dad. He likes it there. Better there than here. I’m … I’m not part of his world, am I? Didn’t figure he’d be responsible. Yeah. Anyway. We’ve got thirty extra days to fill.”

She’d be a wreck until Jake returned from where ever the RDA hurtled him into. And then…. But then – it would be his turn to dread every day every day of it.

At the cabin, they gathered by the faucet to wash. The deer’s blood stained everything. Faces. Hands. Even Cici could not escape that excess. It was then that TukTuk – the little sister – emerged with a watergun.

Spider feigned a mobster’s death as if her sprays were bullets.

“Look what they did to my boy!” Junior wailed at the sight flush with blood and water.

Tiri used Cici to sort the meat. They worked at the kitchen Jake built for the barbeque outside. They continued to butcher the deer as its larger cuts were split into smaller cuts. Finer cuts fit for the freezer.

The task spread blood everywhere.

“It’s like a crime scene,” Cici gasped.

Tiri shook her head.

That’s where Spider caught a glimpse of Mrs. Sully. Something about her just…. What was it, though? Her shape? Her outline? Something he couldn’t … he couldn’t quite grasp about her figure. The whole, entire being of her. It sparked a vision. That had to be a memory. Except it couldn’t be. Maybe a dream? Maybe a wish? Maybe those worlds he’d get swallowed into….

It had to be something other than memory.

… but if it were? … What’s real is real, isn’t that so? Only fantasy or if not so then the mind of a child, yes, yes, only the mind of a child could have withstood such gaps to reality and endured.

Jake always said Spider and Yammy had been babies together. Tiri hushed him. Yes, he remembered that so vividly. But he could not recall anything before the age of four. And, stranger and stranger still, he did recall meeting Yammy and what a memory that event had been. Touching hands like, like they were stranger’s hands. Touching faces as if there were traces of features that should have been there yet weren’t. Everything else to the age of five was splintered and randomized. If he’d try, he’d yield images. Just images. Stills. He’d draw them. Until his mother – then – he shuddered – his father intervened to end it.

And just like that, at the drop of the gesture, what so ever it had been that triggered it, it came anew.

“You, OK, bro?” it was Junior, clasping and kneading at Spider's shoulders.

“Got my wires crossed, didn’t I, cuz? How’s Cici?”

“Mom’s going easy with her. Weird, right?”

“It’s your dad.” Spider sighed: “not a lot of updates.”

Mrs. Sully never spoke about her ‘country’. She’d talk about her ‘forest’ and her 'people' but wouldn't name anything of the kind. The boys implied it had to be far. Once, Junior told Spider they’d need star maps to find it. Spider laughed but Tiri uttered ‘Lo’ak’ so softly that the boy turned white.

Spider used to track the stamps of his father’s passport. Islands – goodness. Lots of islands. Lots of colonies. Spread from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans. Clusters of stays throughout Australia. Indonesia. Papua. Jake was his father’s aid-de-camp; they would have been inseparable. Tom like his mother weren’t ex-army but they were workaholics. The lot of them found a family in the RDA and couldn't let it go. It was Tom who met Tiri first so the family lore went. Tiri had to be a native of that area. Vast as it was.

All of them would have met somewhere along the way at any of those islands or facilities under the RDA’s flag.

Spider's routine had been to retreate into the Denver public library when ever his father returned. It was always such a shock to the system he’d need days if not weeks to ‘compress’ himself into shape. That yielded time to read every book they shelved about that corner of the world. It wasn’t unknown. Entirely. Information was slow to spread. Every so often nuggets could be found at the National Geographic.

Without names or directions he’d try matching patterns like the bows and the blades Tiri made. Or body paint. Or words where words could be discerned. From those chants she’d make the boys recite. It wasn’t anything they’d teach him. He wasn’t initiated…. By proximity, though, he’d discern a few words. He couldn’t tell them all, where they’d start or stop, only that a couple of syllables kept repeating like a mantra: aewa or eewa. Skxawng wasn’t part of that chant; it was their favorite to say; when they were out of their parent’s earshot.

Exactly once he heard his father utter 'skxawng' at the crew - to Lyle? to Z-Dog? to him? Jake's eyes widened. A kind of hush settled over the world. Then Colonel excused himself. From that Spider knew to keep his mouth shut very very tightly. It felt as if it would be safer to confess his love for Yammy than to cross what ever boundary that word implied.

He couldn’t find any sort of aboriginal culture that matched their arts or their words anyhow.

“Hey?” Yammy smiled and Spider laughed, finally, finally tumbling into reality. They were taller and thinner even than Junior. They stood almost untethered to the earth. Blocking the sun. Casting the shade. That lifted this weight attacking Spider’s eyes. Yet, it wasn’t their stature that turned his mind topsy-turvy. It was their hands. Yammy had the most amazing hands. Amazing at holding his, anchoring his. They always knew how to calm his chaos. “Ma monkey is daydreaming?”

“Yeah, who knows where I am half the time, huh?”

End of Chapter

Link to Chapter 01

[kryptophysics]

Avatar Backrooms

In this bizarre Alternate Universe take, the RDA discovers the backrooms in the early 20th century, and that permits them to reach Pandora. People move back and forth between worlds; as they do so, the backrooms generate 'avatar' bodies for them. These bodies, that they don't understand, yet, stay permanent until the next time they pass through the backrooms.

This starts many years after the RDA was kicked out of Pandora by the Toruk Makto. The RDA is itching to return, however. Jake and Neytiri are living on Earth as human avatars. Spider lives with the Sullys more or less and is dating Neteyam. Other characters like Norm, Grace, Kiri, and Varang exist as well.

Tentatively set around the 1990's.

01 - The Hunt

Spider simply loved her. It didn’t matter how scary she’d get hunting that spring. It was jitters…. Jake wasn’t there and that was that. It was jitters and every so often it emerged as growls at her kids' attitudes, at her kids’ Americanisms, at her kids’ friend especially. He’d deflect by being useful. She’d let him be useful. And so he learnt to read her moods better than her own kids. Goodness because he’d need to. But she was a lot easier to deal with than his father – she at her worst was better than his father at his best.

It was for those moments, that came and went like blinks of the eye, that past by almost unnoticed except by him … when ever her arrows fell her targets … and, and it didn’t matter how long it would be for Jake to return. She’d celebrate with those yips and those dances. And it always put a smile to Spider’s face.

Colorado permitted hunting with archery during spring; a narrow window of time that the Sullys took advantage of whether or not Jake was present.

The deer, a buck with a rack, went down. It fell head then body right into the dirt.

Tiri, that’s what Jake called her. But her kids never called her that. And Spider never dared. She was mom. Mom rushed into the site of its death. She dropped the massive bow then raised a massive blade. A frightful tool of chipped obsidian that dwarfed her hand. With it she finished the deer with a chant.

Spider and Yammy approached to watch Tiri’s ceremony. That’s when she gave her eldest son the blade. Yammy repeated the mantras and the movements while Tiri directed. It had to be a ritual from their aboriginal ways; of which Spider was privy to yet ignorant of – he wasn’t initiated.

Afterward the boys tied that catch onto the logs. They carried it lengthwise shoulder by shoulder. While Tiri lead the way through the trail. By then it would be a mile’s worth of hiking across level grade turf to reach their impromptu campsite.

That’s where Tiri connected with Junior, her youngest son, and Cici, a girl, a neighbor of theirs. Junior and Cici spent the morning chatting together instead of preparing for the butchering. That was enough to wake Tiri’s ire but that wasn’t everything. That girl just didn’t know enough about hunting for her liking. Few Americans, even, Coloradans were adept with the skill.

But she wasn’t going to press it, or so Spider thought – at least not the way she usually pressed Junior’s dates.

“We got to work while the meat’s fresh,” Spider said as Yammy and Junior started to cut. Tiri watched them, grading them perhaps with her expressions that they followed as if life or death hung in the balance. Spider made himself useful as the boy’s goffer. Go for this. Go for that. He learnt that skill from his father those (rare) days he accompanied the colonel and the crew on their hunts.

Spider continued to soothe Cici into the fold: “It’s never as fun with my father. He makes the crew do everything. While he paces, barking orders, commanding not relaxing. He doesn’t know how to relax. I swear. And me? Me…. I only ever get to watch. With the Sullys I shoot. I’m not bad with archery. I’m not as good as Mrs. Sully. Goodness, no one is as good as Mrs. Sully. She out-hunts the men. Even Jake. So I follow what she does one hundred percent.”

Crouched over the bloody mess the boys made of the carcass, Tiri kept her ears more than her eyes fixed onto the Spider.

“Boy,” she commanded, pointing to the gash Yammy and Junior made into the belly of the beast. “You work that.”

Spider smirked and worked his way onto the ‘wound’ like a surgeon.

“OK so the innards are about to be the outtards,” he warned Cici while the boys laughed.

“Snap, oh no, your innards are outtards,” Junior echoed the Colonel’s drawl.

Tiri growled – “no jokes.”

Yammy smirked at Spider – who worked diligently under Tiri’s gaze. He formed a pile of organs onto that turf. Cici kept ever and ever distant. As he stacked the entrails, Tiri inspected and sorted. Two piles. The first for the coolers. The second for the dogs.

“You two,” she said to her sons, “the hide. Careful like this boy was careful. I want only one try this time,” mom warned.

Spider and the boys took their blades and switched to the deer’s hide. It was to be degloved with the fewest cuts. The feat took several yanks and hisses before it was done to Tiri’s satisfaction. It wasn’t but she let it slide.

By then Cici retreated into an ATV.

“Good. Wash. Pack. We go back.”

End of Chapter

A/N: yes the names are shortened; it's part of their attempt to blend into the US.

This is going to be a long series for me. I'm envisioning about 100 chapters, collected into 10 major arcs, each of 10 chapters. I've got 11 written with a 12th chapter to come. I've also got the remaining arcs somewhat plotted.

Even when I was an active fanfic writer, 15 or so years ago, I didn't attempt anything like this. I was known for oneshots mostly. And for some pretty out there shit.... Which brings me to this:

I'm out of practice when it comes to posting work, esp on Tumblr. I remember a very different tumblr BTW. Anyway, if I'm using the wrong tags or missing tags, you got to let me know.

I don't foresee this as going above a T rating.

Link to AO3 and FF.NET

[kryptophysics]

[kryptophysics]

[kryptophysics]

[kryptophysics]

[kryptophysics]

just in case you’re wondering why this blog is suddenly following you, this is the blog that runs tribalmalebeauty, it’s always been a sideblog of mine. i’m just trying to catch up

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Josef Hoflehner

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North Dakota, 2016

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