(Prompt submission) Grace's Eridian doctors are large animal veterinarians. There are some awkward adjustment periods.
THIS 🤣🤣 imagining the absolutely bonkers kinds of eridians that must have been yoinked from their jobs to suddenly be in charge of keeping the FIRST SAPIENT ALIEN EVER alive brings me cackling-maniacally levels of glee. yes, please tell me more about the eridian lab tech who does the boring, monotonous cataloguing of bacterial glycosyltransferase enzymes suddenly having their space phone BLOWING UP. random eridian who's job is just. feeding and wrestling the big terrestrial predators at the zoo into taking their meds is suddenly missing from work, later found to be kidnapped and taken to Eridian WHO headquarters with new job of putting pills in peanut butter for rocky's new alien pal. thank you thank you!
Grace sees a new Eridian team-mate stressing out about working on a huge team and feeling underqualified and also used to obscurity but now having far too much scrutiny and he laughs, "oh, you've been Stratted too, huh?'
A Father's Heart: A Beauty and the Beast Retelling
For the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge
Let me tell you, I sure confused that Beast when I returned. Have you ever seen a cat pounce on its own tail? That was the look of confusion the Beast had when he saw me in his palace. Only this cat was enormous—standing seven feet tall on his hind legs—black as soot, with claws this long, and a mouth full of teeth like butcher knives.
"Where is your daughter?" he asked me. Yes, that's what he sounded like—all deep and raspy, like he was growling and purring beneath his words.
"At home," I said.
"You did not bring her?"
“You told me,” I told him, "that I could return to be devoured or send her to take my place. I returned.”
"She did not wish to save you?"
“I never told her. Do you think I could lay that kind of burden upon my own daughter? What sort of father do you take me for?”
He had taken me for a cowardly one, I guess, because it took me a long time to convince him that my daughters were all safely at home, and I didn't plan to fetch any of them. He didn't seem to know what to do with me after that. He wasn't as bloodthirsty as I'd have expected someone with that many teeth to be.
"You will be my guest," he said at last—and he didn't seem too glad about saying it. No doubt he'd have preferred a pretty young girl as a houseguest to a weathered old sailor. But he gave me run of the place—I could help myself to anything, go anywhere I pleased. I didn't understand it. He'd been ready to kill me for a rose, and now he was giving me everything in the house?
I wasn't about to complain, though, so I set about to enjoy the place. The Beast encouraged me to enjoy the luxuries of the palace, but I've always been a working man—I didn't fancy living the life of an idle aristocrat. Before the week was out, I was working in the gardens—the place was overgrown like you wouldn't believe. When I wanted a rest, I'd explore the castle, and boy, was there plenty to see. He had rooms upon rooms of treasures—paintings, silks, wines, musical instruments, even an entire room full of exotic birds! I'd made my living selling such things, and my head swam at the sight of it—a tenth of it would have been worth more than all the riches I could have transported in ten lifetimes.
I didn't make my fortune by having dull wits, and I didn't lose it for lack of courage, so it wasn't long before I began to piece together the truth of this place and confronted the Beast with it.
"How long have you been cursed, your highness?" I asked him one evening at supper.
That great big cat was so shocked he knocked a wine bottle off the table. "Who says I am cursed?"
"Blazes, man, I'm not blind! This palace is worth more than most of the kingdoms of the world put together. If there was a king out there this rich, you can bet every merchant in the world would know of him. He'd have destroyed the world's economy. Fairy magic's the only way you get a horde like this, but you, sir, are no fairy."
Now the Beast seemed intrigued. "How do you know that?"
"A fairy would never have let me live—if he promised to kill me, he'd have killed me. No mercy among their kind. Only a human could have changed his mind like that—for which I'm very grateful, by the way."
"You're welcome," he said, seeming dazed.
I went on, "You're definitely more than a dumb beast; you walk and talk and dress like a man, so it stands to reason you were a man once—that furry coat of yours is just some fairy shell. Same way all these riches are probably just dirt and ashes once you take away the magic. Which means you must have run afoul of a fairy sometime in your past, who decided to curse you with an animal body and then trap you in a palace full of false riches."
I looked at the furnishings, the food, the Beast's clothes—everything spoke of royalty. "Fairies always meddle with royals, so you must have been a prince. The seventh son of the king of Gher went missing just before I went on my last voyage, so I'd wager that he is you. Am I right?"
The Beast goggled. "I…can't say."
"Which means I'm right. No fairy worth his salt would let you say you were cursed. Which means all I have to do is figure out how to break it. Those fairies always give you a way out—the more improbable the better."
I came around to his side of the table so I could walk around him and examine him from all angles. "You were disappointed when I came—you wanted one of my daughters, not me. When I did come, you didn't seem too keen on killling me—which makes me think it was an empty threat, trying to convince me to send my daughter instead. Which means she must be the way to break the curse. What can she do that I can't? Easy—true love. No fairy would think a girl could love a hulking monster like you, so that would be their impossible way to break the curse. You needed, what—true love? Marriage?"
"I can't say," the Beast said, but I knew by his face that I'd hit upon the right answer.
"That makes things simple. You let me out once before. Let me go home again and fetch one of my girls, tell her there's a prince waiting for her, and bring her back to join you in wedded bliss."
He seemed genuinely horrified by that. "I…can't say."
"Oh, of course. It won't count if she knows you're a prince. Well, I'll leave that part out. Tell her that the Beast who spared my life is in need of more company. With a bit of time and a bit of encouragement from her old dad, we'll have you back in human form by Christmas."
He thought it was worth a try, and something he could arrange with the conditions of his curse. So I went home to my children, convinced my sons not to follow me to slay the Beast, and made the castle sound intriguing enough that all three of my girls agreed to join me. I thought that maybe Hope would be the one to break the curse—she's always been the boldest of my girls—but it turned out that my quiet, gentle Beauty brought out the soft side of the Beast. It was the cutest thing you ever saw, the way they'd sit together reading in the rose gardens, that great big cat as shy as a schoolboy with her.
It wasn't three weeks before the Beast worked up the courage to propose—and my Beauty accepted without hesitation. Then there was blinding light and earthquakes, and when the dust cleared, the palace was gone. We were standing in a clearing in the woods—and a black-haired prince stood where the black-haired Beast had once been.
He's an excellent boy—I'll be proud to call him a son. He doesn't mind at all that his bride's the daughter of a failed merchant or that she once worked on a farm. We'll all be moving to his palace across the sea to live as honored members of the family.
Which is why we're moving out on such short notice—his highness doesn't want to be away from his kingdom any longer than he has to. I'm sure you'll find someone else to take the old place off your hands.
No, you don't have to believe me, but it's much better if you do. You'll look much less like a fool once it comes out that it's all true.
Warren hit the floor again for the umpteenth time that day. He didn't even process Scott hitting him till he’s already on the ground.
"You all good to go again?" Scott reaches out a hand to help him up.
No, Warren thinks, I'm tired, I'm sore, I'm not getting any better. It doesn't even look like Scott's breaking a sweat. Maybe…maybe he just isn't meant to fight. Maybe Warren can just be the pretty face, bank roll the team, sit on the sidelines while they do what he clearly can't. Then he feels that pit in his stomach again.
He takes Scott's hand. "Sure. One more round." Scott clenches his jaw as he helps Warren back up.
“Alright. One more.”
Drew this as part of my own fic Call Me Fighter which you can read here!! :D
Can we talk about Charles's attack methods. His psychic ones at least.
His big move to stop or at least halt Apocalypse is literally, *BOOM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA BEAM* 😭 is that all he knows how to do? First the holocaust beam now the remember when your own mother left you for dead in the desert? Yesss remember it!!!
Episode 8 beautifully showcased that when Nightcrawler doesn’t hold back, his combined skills of instant teleportation and lightning agility are formidable and deadly.
Under mind-control, in the heat of battle, he bodies:
Forge
Psylocke
Morph
Angel
Scott
Jean
Storm
Sunspot
Jubilee
And Cable
Good thing he’s the best boy or the X-men would be screwed.
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