Minimal Context Fanfic Theatre

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"Tell him- tell him we are going to put him in the TURDUCKEN OF SHAME!"

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“I survived an encounter with The Flesh and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”

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“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? You’re so hot I want to tear all my clothes off.”

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"YOU CAN PRY EDDIE BROCK OUT OF OUR COLD, DEAD, MONSTER-FUCKING FINGERS, YOU HEATHEN!"

*

...I don't know how this conversation- which is apparently about Venom being an icon to the monsterfucker community and whether or not they were a canon couple- starts, but I'm sure it's to be a doozy.

(There's an 85% chance that Bachue is involved but I think it's one or the girls who yells this.)

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One of the best things about the Gargoyles TV show is that the “present day” era is 1994 - 1996, so if you were to walk up to one of the characters and say the phrase “Charizard vore” to them , they’d have no idea what you were talking about. And I think that’s beautiful.

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You only need be just out of sight of civilization for the forest to swallow you whole.

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RvB post-season-16 AU part 2

Part 1, and Part 3. (Part three was finished first, so it was posted first.) # Tucker doesn’t know how long he stays there, head pressed to the red earth, dragging air into his lungs and shoving it back out again. It feels like it did right before he found himself back in Blood Gulch, everything around him distant and hazy, only rather than his body fading to softness, he can feel his pulse throbbing through every inch of it. His mouth tastes like metal, like he’s being gagged with pennies. He wants to yank his helmet off to get more air, but even without Wash’s training having beaten into him to never do that again! ever! near a firefight, he has the occasional reminder of why it would be an awful idea in the form of bullets smattering near his position. Eight years. Eight years. Eight years. EIGHT. YEARS! 

Tucker’s fingers claw into the dirt and grip tight.

Breathe in; hold. Breathe out; hold. Breathe in...

...breathe...

...

...

By the time he’s grounded himself, Simmons and Grif are no longer shooting at him. Tucker picks himself up and puts himself back together, sealing his suit and slotting his armor carefully back in place. Whatever the fuck this is, he’s not about to let a lucky shot by one of the Reds end it. The trip back to Blue Base is a slower one, less panicked but more paranoid. Tucker feels like he’s walking in the crosshairs of a dozen sniper scopes. Anybody could be up on the cliffs, ready to take him out. Except apparently for Church. Why isn’t Church here? Or Caboose? Is this a reset...or a rewrite? The thought is like ice water poured down his back. Tucker shivers, cold despite the heat of the canyon. Are Sarge and Donut gone, too? Is it just him and Grif and Simmons left, like that superhero movie where the bad guy won and took out half of humanity with a snap of his fingers? Who else is still out there? Who else *isn’t*? What if he wakes up tomorrow and- His comm crackles, spilling a voice into his ear. “The good news is, Flowers is buried. The bad news is, we’re out of grenades. And if the next words out of your mouth are about the goddamn sniper rifle, I’m turning my radio back off.”

Tucker chokes. “...Church?” “Yeah?” “Church?” “WHAT? Jeez, spit it out already, Tucker.” “Where are you??” “Blue Base. Where the fuck else would I be? At the fucking store?”

There’s a blip on his HUD as Blue Base comes within range. As fast as Tucker had made it to Red Base, the speed he puts on now puts it to shame. Church. In Blue Base. With actual vital signs. Because he’s alive. Alive in a living body. Did he always have that body? Did Freelancer grow it for him or something? Whatever, he’s here and alive is the point. Not erased or fragmented into unrecoverable pieces. There’s movement on the roof. Tucker’s tempted to try leaping directly on top of Blue Base, even knowing that this older-style armor doesn’t have the mods to manage that successfully. Tucker checks himself, and bolts up the ramp instead. And there he is, standing on top of Blue Base like he never left it (he never had), the stupid sniper rifle that he never learned to use properly held in his hands like a totem. It smacks against the front of Tucker’s armor when he flings his arms around Church, bearing him back against the merlon with a CLUNK. The last time Tucker had tried to tackle his friend, he’d passed right through him. But the rifle is real. The armor is real. Church is real. A fresh wave of dizziness comes over Tucker; everything still feels unreal, no matter how solid the proof before him. “What. In the HELL, Tucker.”  Church sounds almost as surprised as he does angry, and Tucker releases him before things can get even more awkward. Or violent. He takes a deep breath, trying to steady his equilibrium and his nerves. What to say? How to explain? He needs to plan his words carefully, to be clear and concise, to TELL HIM TELL HIM EVERYTHING TELL HIM RIGHT NOW!! The compulsion overrides all logic, and Tucker finds himself blurting out: “Look, I know you don’t know me that well, but you have to believe what I’m about to tell you. Sometime in the future, we leave Blood Gulch, and we learn a whole lot of shit that was supposed to be secret and we blow the lid off of a couple military conspiracies and stop a war, an actual war, and then we try to retire and we get these new bases, and I’m all like, there’s no better way you can pick up chicks than by being in a band-” Church maglocks the rifle to his back and catches both of Tucker’s wildly-gesticulating arms, pulling them still. “Tucker, what the fuck are you babbling about?” His stomach swoops with an awful feeling like deja vous mated with vertigo and then implanted him with the resulting embryo, but Tucker shakes free and soldiers forward. “I know all this sounds crazy, but eventually we become time-travel warriors, and then one day we try to save a friend of ours but instead we, like, broke reality or some shit and I wound up back here, eight years ago-” “Tucker? Tucker, calm down. Listen to me. You haven’t gone back in time, okay? You probably just jerked it too hard behind your special rock and passed out and had a dehydration dream. Go drink some water and stay out of the sun for a while, dipshit.” “But-” Tucker goes on to try to impress the importance- the truth- of what he’s saying to Church. Church, still standing directly in front of Tucker, responds by announcing he’s driving through a tunnel, making a noise like static, and turning off his radio. Tucker has missed this asshole so much. # [Sept 10, 2018.]

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RvB post-season-16 AU snippet - opening scene

(So this is where the story actually starts. There’s a couple more scenes that happen between this bit and the bit I posted yesterday, but they aren’t written yet. Hey I got the connecty bits done, so you should really read Part 2 before you read Part 3.)

Tucker hears Grif yelling “DON’T!” somewhere behind him seconds before the chatter from Carolina’s rifle as she blows away the trooper targeting Wash. And then everything goes...soft.

“What’s going on?” The room around them is fading; not going dark, but going light. Tucker’s ears have started ringing in a way he associates with aftermath of grenade going off close by.

“We’re too late!” Carolina’s voice seems thin and far away, although she’s standing two feet from him. The meaning of her words still hit him with the force of a hammer. They’d lost.

Oh shit. They’d lost, and now the whole fucking world was ending, and Tucker hadn’t even-

“Kai! I need to tell you-” he blurts out, squinting through the rising glare for the yellow of her armor. He can’t see color any more, just dim shapes in the fog.

Kaikaina’s voice calls back to him, but Tucker can’t make out what she’s saying. The space around them has filled with white noise to match the white light.

Tucker feels like everything around him is made of static, and then like *he’s* made out of static, and then there’s no difference no body no oxygen no brain no him-

> BLINK <

And just like that, the world is back, full-color and static-free. Tucker has lungs and ears and the capacity for rational thought again, although maybe not 100% on that last one, because he also has eyes and right in front of those eyes is a very large rock with very familiar writing on it in teal spray paint.

Keep Out!

Tucker’s Rock!

He looks to his left: Looming canyon wall.

He looks to his right: Looming canyon wall.

He turns around: A blue-coded base, and a bit behind it, the third looming wall of the box canyon that surrounds goddamn mothershitting Blood Gulch Outpost Alpha.

Tucker’s so caught up in his feelings of anger, fear, and desolation that it takes him a full minute to realize that he’s alone. There’s not another soul in sight, and no signs of nearby life showing in his HUD. However he came to be back in Blood Gulch, it doesn’t look like any of the others came with him.

Unless his sensors were damaged by whatever just happened. There was probably a lot of electro-magnet waves involved; they could have acted like a low-level emp and messed up some of his armor’s systems. Tucker tells his suit to run a full diagnostic, and then flips on his radio.

“Wash? Carolina? Grif? Caboose? ...Anyone??” He queries as he heads towards Blue Base.

There’s no reply. Tucker picks up his pace. As if getting to Blue Base faster will make it any less empty when you get there, his brain snarks at him. He shoves the thought aside and breaks into a run, clinging to the hope that it’s just a problem with his suit and his radio, and when he gets inside he’ll see some of his team there, or all of them, safe and sound and not shot through the throat or-

He skids to a stop inside the central room, a quip already on his lips about them all missing him. But there’s no-one there. There’s no-one in the hallways, or in the living quarters beneath the base. There’s no-one in the kitchen or the infirmary or the armory.

Tucker stomps up the stairs and takes off towards the other end of the canyon. The fear that it’ll prove just as abandoned burns like acid in his throat, but he has to try, he can’t just NOT look because he’s afraid of what he might (not) find. Besides, if *he* was sent to Blue Base, then it’s plenty logical that one of the Reds was sent to Red Base. That’s just common sense.

Still, he almost doesn’t believe it when he spots two figures standing on top of Red Base, one in gold armor and one in maroon. Tucker has never been so happy to see Grif and Simmons in the entire time he’s known them. He waves his hand as he draws close, as if it were possible for them to miss his approach.

“HEY! IS EVERYO-”

Both Simmons and Grif open fire on him.

“JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE FUCK, GUYS!” Tucker shrieks as he dives out of the way.

“WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU EXPECTING, BLUE?” Simmons hollers back at him.

Tucker takes cover behind a small boulder before responding.

“I DON’T KNOW, SIMMONS? MAYBE FOR YOU NOT TO TRY AND SHOOT MY ASS!?”

There’s a long moment of silence, and then Simmons’ voice cracking through octaves Tucker hasn’t heard in years: “HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME!?!! AND WHY WOULDN’T WE BE TRYING TO SHOOT YOU?!”

“YEAH. WE’RE AT WAR, MORON!” Grif adds.

Tucker opens his mouth. Closes it again. Peaks around the rock and takes a good look at Simmons and Grif, and then takes a good look at his own armor. It’s old. It’s all...old. He reaches for his sword and it’s NOT FUCKING THERE. Heart pounding, Tucker starts stripping down practically in front of Red Base, peeling open the front of his bodysuit as soon as he has his chest piece off.

The scars on his abdomen are gone. The marks from the most significant moments of his life, wiped clean as though they never existed. This body was never stabbed by Felix.

This body never ‘delivered’ Junior.

The horror of realization rises through him like a wave. He wasn’t teleported to Blood Gulch; he was RESET to it, all the way back to a point before he and the Reds even knew each other’s names. And just like the incident with Wyoming, Tucker the only one of them who remembers what happened.

Only this time, it’s not fifteen minutes of future events that he’s the only one who knows about. It’s EIGHT YEARS worth.

*

[July 31, 2018]

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RvB post season 16 AU snippet - Part 3

That night Tucker can’t sleep, his mind stuck thinking in endless circles about time travel, paradoxes, and his sword.

It made sense, in the ways this sort of thing made sense. Since in the universe as they knew it Wash had been shot, they *couldn’t* save Wash because they *hadn’t* saved Wash, because if Wash had never been shot then none of them would have had a reason to go back into time to try to stop it, so they wouldn’t stop it, which meant Wash *would* get shot, which meant-

Tucker closes his eyes as tightly as he can against his growing headache, which is dumb thing to do because it only ever makes them worse, and breathes slowly through his nose.

-which meant they’d created a paradox. That had to be it, right? The fact that they DID save Wash had broken the laws of time or reality or causality or some shit like that. But time hadn’t ended, it had fucking reset, and it had reset to some random-ass point after he’d been stationed at Blood Gulch. Specifically, the week between Captain Flower’s death and Caboose’s arrival. But here’s the thing: Captain Flowers had died because Church had gone back in time to save him, but what Church did to try to save Flowers turned out to be what killed him in the first place. So in the future of *this* reality Church has already travelled back through time, yeah? Which means that everything that happened last time which put Church in a position to meet Gamma must already still happen- still *have* happened- at least up until that event. Because Church can’t time-travel when he has a living body, he has to become a “ghost” and get a robot body first, which only happens because Caboose shoots him with Sheila, which *also* was only able to happened  because Church tried to time-travel to stop Caboose from doing that, and just like with Flowers’ death, what Church did turned out to be the very thing that got himself killed. And here’s the next thing: What if Tucker stops Caboose from blowing up Church? Would that create another paradox and reset things again? Because the only reason Church will be able to travel through time in the future is because of his current body’s death in the present. And, fucking AND, the only reason Caboose is even in Blood Gulch is because Flowers had died, which ALSO only happened because Church will be able to travel through time in the future because of his death in the present. ...Right? So if he saves Church’s current body from getting killed, that will trip another paradox, only this time Tucker won’t remember anything, because in this reality he doesn’t have the sword yet, and since the sword was apparently the reason he was able to remember all the alternate futures when Wyoming had been looping them, he’s pretty fucking sure his possession of it at the time of the paradox is the only reason he’s able to remember the events of *that* now-alternate future. It’s as if the last- okay, goddammit, the NEXT eight years were one big time loop. And Tucker knows what happens, more or less. He can fix things, stop some of the worst shit that happened from happening...just as long as he’s careful to not fuck around too much until after they pass the far end of the events involved in Church’s little closed loop time-travel bullshit. Unless Flowers’ death in this reality being at the exact same time as in the original reality was just a coincidence, and isn’t a sign that Church has, or will, die later this week and travel through time three months from now. Maybe the entire future is open. Maybe Tucker can do ANYTHING and not have to worry about his choices destroying the world again. Maybe- Tucker’s headache has gotten to the point where he can’t ignore it anymore. With a groan, he gets up, turns on the light, and pads down the hall to the infirmary to get some Aspirin. The bottle is empty.

* * * * *

The rest of the night is spent trying to Figure Shit Out. It’s hard keeping everything straight, though, so Tucker snags an air-strike requisition form and writes down a list of Important Things To Do on the back of it:

1. Have Junior. It’s not that his kid is more important than his friends, or that he’s putting the “miracle of having a child” above all else or some bullshit like that- it’s that when you get down to it, Junior’s probably the biggest reason the Sangheili splinter factions haven’t continued the war against humanity. Junior’s pretty much a deity to all Sangheili, so even the ones who’d just as soon eat a dude’s face off as give him the time of day respect the treaties their peoples have signed. So Junior’s pretty fucking important. Also, pretty fucking awesome.

2. Protect Church. From himself, when necessary.

3. Keep Wash from getting shot. Obviously the incident at Desert Gulch is the most important one, but Wash was also shot, like, seventeen previous times or something ridiculous like that. So Tucker’s going to do his best to help Wash dodge bullets unless the fate of all time, reality, etc. itself hangs in the balance. (But preferably avoiding that situation altogether, too.) 4. Stop (Prevent?) war on Chorus. Look, he’s just writing these down in the order that he thinks of them, okay? Sure, saving countless lives on Chorus ought to go before saving one or two guys, but Tucker knows how to save those one or two guys. Or at least, he has some pretty good ideas about what will keep Church and Wash safe. But a whole planet? Tucker doesn’t even know what officially started the war. Was Hargrove involved in it from the beginning, or had he simply exploited an existing situation? When were Felix and Locus sent in? Speaking of which... 5. Kill Felix. Seriously. Fuck that guy.

6. [scratched out] Locus. ?? Locus had saved their lives twice over; saved Wash’s life three times. He regretted what he’d done on Chorus enough to dedicate his life to atoning for it- or so he said. Tucker had only spent a few months with Felix; he can’t fathom what it must have been like to be partnered with that manipulative asshole for years. And Locus hasn’t killed anyone on Chorus yet...so Tucker’s willing to give him a chance to prove he deserves more than Felix does. (Because seriously? FUCK THAT GUY.) 7. Stop Temple. Carolina hadn’t told him much about the Murder Basement she and Wash had been trapped in, but what she’d said- and how she’d said it- had been more than enough. “They were our friends. Our teammates. And he left each of them to an agonizing death in a room full of rotting corpses, knowing full well they were going to suffer the same fate.” It had made Tucker regret not killing him. But he supposes if he can get Temple’s ass locked up before he has a chance to start his murder spree, that will do. 

Tucker is still totally going to shoot Felix in the head, though. 8. Get Kai to [scratched out] [scratched out][scratched out][scratched out] really^ like me. Shut up. Anyway. It felt like he was forgetting some things. Uh…OH! His- 9. Sword! Which, come to think of it, he needs in order to have Junior; it’s what marked him for that goddamn prophecy in the first place. Fuck it, he should find a way to get the key to Chorus as well. If Tucker activates Santa, he may be able to use *him* to keep the planet from going to war. 10. Steal Epsilon. Church needed to know the truth about himself. Which was going to be one fun fucking picnic. Ugh. 11. Locate the Director, tell Carolina where he is. And let that shit sort itself out again. 12. Tex & Omega / OmAli  So much had happened because of those two that Tucker isn’t sure if he wants to help Tex get rid of Omega without dying first or just feed them both to the OH FUCK- 13. The Meta! Yeah, that was a pretty big one. Probably shouldn’t be so far down on the list. Technically, dealing with The Meta was already part of points 1 and 2, since The Meta was one of the things that Tucker wanted to keep Church safe from and also one of the people who had shot Wash. Taking The Meta out would simplify a lot of shit; too bad Tucker has no clue how to do that. At least, not by himself. ...Not that he has to do it by himself. Hmm… 14. Everyone else. Which is to say, the rest of the Reds and Blues. Tucker’s not sure what he even means with this one. It encompasses a fuck of a lot, and most of it probably couldn’t be put into words anyway. The one thing that he can say for certain is that he wants them all to survive this. They deserve it, after everything they’ve been through- and everything they’re about to go through AGAIN. So...the sword’s gotta be first, right? The sword will make everything easier, and in some cases, is necessary for them to even be possible. But should he wait for the events that led to him getting the sword the first time, or go AWOL and retrieve it now? Jesus, what even WERE the events that led to him finding it? Tex was being a bitch, and he’d fallen into a hole, but they’d only been at that place because Omega had possessed Doc after being kicked out of Caboose’s head. Which he was only inside of in the first place ‘cause Tex had died. Which...shit, how had that happened again? Oh, right, Donut throw a grenade at her, after she’d thrown a grenade at *him* while trying to get the flag back from the Reds, because Omega preferred violence over stealth. Tucker tries not to think about the fact he’s the one who signed off on bringing in a Freelancer and giving Tex that mission in the first place. Yeah, so maybe helping Tex out with Omega from the start is the best way to go. If they can take Omega out of the equation, it’ll make a lot of their would-be future problems go away. ...Won’t it? [July 30, 2018]

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Bachue, Peirene, and Sigil, loudly singing: “AO3 gets rid of all my streesss, It’s got tags and collections, so I don’t have to gueesss, There’s always some new fics, I can a-void all my squicks, And just read lots of stuff involving dii-” OKAY OKAY FINE WE’LL GO SEE DEADPOOL 2 TOMORROW, JUST STOP. THE GODDAMN. FILKING. OKAY??? Peirene: “That sounds really, really great!” ... *sigh*

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Locus stares at Grif. He can feel the words forming in his head, feel them straining to leave his lips, but try as he might he cannot stop them: "....The movie, or the book?"

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“No. I don’t need one of those pale-ass “daylight” bulbs, I need some of those bright-white CFL motherfuckers that make you look at and think the revelation of god himself is upon you.”

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OF COURSE Bachue plays a Bard as a DnD character.

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Sigil: “I’m just saying, if Miss Piggy weren’t a muppet, I’d date her.” Bachue: “Pssh, you’re totally not her type.” Sigil: “Not her TYPE??” Bachue: “Yeah. She needs someone more on her level. Personality-wise. Someone who wouldn’t be completely steamrolled by her.” Sigil: “Okay, you may have a point there. So...if Miss Piggy DID exist in our reality...” Bachue: “...she’d totally be hooking up with Demona.”

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Growing up in that house, with its painfully-yellow 70′s kitchen, I never realized anything was wrong.

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“She’s just mad at me ‘cause I once told her I hoped she got ulcerative colitis.” “Wow. What a shitty thing to wish on someone.” “...”