#gooblin

[excellent-monster-girl-ideas]

Monster Girl Imagine #409

Your girlfriend is a goo-blin, a girl whose father was a goblin and whose mother was a slime. As such, she's half shortstack goblin girl and half gooey slime girl. She's "basically the sexiest thing alive", in her own words. She's not exactly wrong.

[kcgrimarts]

Gobtober Happy Halloween!!!

[aka-willow]

Open Fields

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Words: 686

Characters: Willow Wren, Gooblin

Prompt/Tag:

“just… come back alive, okay?”

“Promise me you’ll come back.”

Summary: Willow heads out to find Dr. Dawn Turner

Timeline: February 2016

Song: America - Simon & Garfunkel

A/N: mosquitoland vibes

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The bus station was nearly empty when Gooblin dropped me off. It was still dark out, about five in the morning. “Just… come back alive, okay? Promise me you’ll come back.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. ‘Promise.” I knew SHIELD was probably monitoring any transportation depots and I kept my head down and away from the security cameras. I couldn’t stay any place too long, and I had arrived at the station right before the departure. “Thanks, Gooblin.”

“See ya,” she said. She didn’t wait for me to get on the bus and instead gave a half-wave as she walked away, and people began crowding the platform.

I knew I looked like a runaway—I was a runaway—but I had a cover story by the time I took my seat near the middle of the bus and a young college-aged guy sat down next to me. “Ready for the long haul?” he asked. He had curly black hair, faded on the sides and left long on the top and dimples when he smiled.

“Yup.”

“Visiting family or something?”

“My parents are divorced,” I said. I had hundreds of stories and details that Marty had told me about his parents. “Seeing my mom.”

“Word,” said the guy. “Mine are divorced, too.” He laughed. “Dad found my mom cheating.”

The bus departed just as the sun began to rise on the horizon and I stared out the window and watched the landscape pass by. Open fields snowed over with tall yellowed grass poking through, faded billboards, Hell is Real, lonely churches and community halls, the occasional cow mooing under the bright blue sky.

Once again, I considered turning on my phone, but I knew that would be a mistake. After fifteen minutes, I was already bored. The college kid next to me had his laptop out and was working on some sort of PowerPoint presentation and I watched as he dragged and dropped diagrams from his image library.

“What are you studying?” I asked.

“Microbiology.”

“Oh, neat.” I have no idea what that means. “Do you go to school in New York?”

“Vermont,” he said. “But there was no direct bus from Vermont to Colorado Springs.”

The minutes stretched into hours as we crossed state lines and I got closer and closer to New Mexico. The bus stopped for food and I played my cards carefully, once again avoiding cameras and paying with the little cash I had left. And what comes after this, Willow?

Dalmar ended up being a pretty good seat neighbor, and he shared a bag of chips with me that he bought at a gas station. I learned that he was also an aspiring musical artist, and by the time we were crossing into the Midwest, he was showing me his Instagram that he posted samples to.

In Colorado Springs, two days later, Dalmar and I parted ways, and as I departed that bus station, I turned my phone back on and grabbed a few maps from a stand. The screen lit up and I knew that I was back on the radar. I followed Dalmar’s Instagram (had to) and then opened notepad and started typing as I walked down a nearly empty street. It was early morning, the mountains were lit with an orange glow, and the sky was still purple.

It’s Willow Wren. I’m writing this on February 21st, 2016. I’m about to break into a HYDRA base in Dulce, New Mexico. What happens to me after doesn’t matter, so I’m setting this message to decrypt and send in one week. You might be able to crack the encryption faster if you go all SHIELD and find out I created this message, but it should at least give me a few days. But, yeah, there’s a HYDRA base in Dulce, New Mexico. When you see this, take them out for me.

I took a deep breath and plugged the message into an online program that would decrypt and send the message as an email in a week. I didn’t have any SHIELD email addresses, but I had Detective Dunphee’s, and I prayed she’d know what to do with the message.

I then wiped my phone and ditched it in Colorado Springs before taking off to Dulce, maps in hand.

[aka-willow]

Has Just Begun

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Words: 1061

Characters: Willow Wren, Gooblin

Prompt/Tag:

“I need a place to stay.”

“this is all a fucking disaster.”

Summary: Willow, now on the run, meets up with Gooblin

Timeline: February 2016

Song: Nice to Meet Me - Zack Hemsey

A/N: ...

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Without my phone, I had a much harder time navigating to Gooblin’s fire tower. I knew the general direction, and a few landmarks to guide to, but it was a crapshoot, especially when I was hiding in the clouds.

After about half an hour, it became apparent that I hadn’t been followed and I had lost whatever tail there was in the air. Didn’t mean that was it, though. I knew I had to get out of the sky soon and stop following the highway. I needed to disappear.

I landed as soon as I saw the woods and started walking. My fingers were itching to turn on my phone and pull up a map, but I was afraid they’d track it the minute it turned on. I thought about everything I had left behind at my base. My laptop. Marty’s drive. Nedward and Boxer Joe. Who’s going to take care of them now? The stupid stuffed elephant. I didn’t have much, but what I did have had been precious. All I had to my name now was a phone I couldn’t use, the sharpie still in my pocket, and the clothes I had fled with.

It hadn’t snowed in a while and I left no footprints as I went further and further into the wilderness. Is this really it? Am I really done? I can’t go back to NYC. I can’t contact anyone from there. What happens now? Because, beyond Dulce, New Mexico, I couldn’t see what my future was supposed to look like. I had wrecked everything to get this far. And there’s still work to be done.

I started recognizing landmarks, the way the hills curved, and the wide-open views up ahead. When I came to a clearing, I realized I had flown over it before. Gooblin’s fire tower couldn’t be much further. I trekked deeper and deeper until above the trees ahead, I saw the tower up on the hill. I ran for the tower, my movement catching Gooblin’s attention. She came out to stand on the deck and yelled down to me.

“Heckergal? What are you doing here?”

“Um… I need a place to stay. I can’t stay in the city anymore. They came looking for me.”

“Really?” Gooblin asked, and I was thankful that she was the most mellow of my siblings. “That’s crazy. Come on up.”

I took a few steps back, and instead of taking the stairs, got a running start and flew up to the deck, almost overshooting it. “Thanks,” I said, removing my hands from pockets and using them to warm my numb face. I hadn’t been able to grab my winter jacket when I was, so I was just in the jacket I used at school to hide the wings.

“You can come in,” said Gooblin, and she opened the tower door, letting a blast of warm air out.

“Oh, this is much better,” I said, and I sat down on the floor, exhausted.

“Who was it?” she asked.

“Um… SHIELD,” I said, still trying to process the other two people. “I got into a fight yesterday and accidentally used my powers. I didn’t think she knew, but now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that hallway had cameras. It was stupid, and I wasn’t thinking. I should’ve have gone to school today.”

“Did they try to talk to you?” she asked. “Sabbath said they talked to her when they put her on the Index.”

“What’s the Index?” I asked. “And since when? How did they find her?”

“She said that SHIELD keeps a list of people with powers, that’s what the Index is. And they didn’t find her,” Gooblin said. “She contacted them. She said it was safer that way. It was at the beginning of December.”

“But she said she wouldn’t,” I said. “She said last time we met that she wouldn’t turn herself in.”

“She was lying, I think.”

“And she went and put herself on a list? And didn’t tell us?”

Gooblin was silent.

“Why would she do that?” I asked.

“She didn’t tell them about the… blue lab stuff… if that makes you feel better,” said Gooblin. “Just the vocal manipulation thing. Not the water thing.”

“This is all a fucking disaster,” I said.

Gooblin went outside for a little bit to enjoy the view and I continued to sit on the floor of the tower, uncapping the Sharpie and retracing Sumerkey on my upper arm, before going over to Gooblin’s computer set up. I rapped on the window. “Okay if I use this?” I asked, and she nodded.

I knew I couldn’t log into any of my accounts; I just needed maps—some sort of course of action towards Dulce, New Mexico. I had never traveled that far before. I didn’t know if I could make the whole flight, and if I could afford to be a fugitive, traveling across the United States with a target on my back. It’s too cold to fly. You’ll never make it—it would be at least a fourteen-hour flight. I started looking at bus websites, but everything to New Mexico seemed to depart from NYC, and I couldn’t afford to go back there.

Flights?

I scoffed at the irony.

I couldn’t drive and hitchhiking was out of the question.

Stowaway? Maybe on a semi? Risky. I sighed and started looking at the bus website again, beginning to plot connecting trips, until I landed on one that would take me from Albany to Colorado Springs. Close enough? It was a little more than a hundred dollars, and sure it would take forty-two hours, but it was the best I could do.

“What’s up?” Gooblin, asked coming back inside. She took a look at the screen. “Buses? To Colorado? What’s there?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said. “I just need someplace to disappear.”

“What, my place isn’t good enough for you?” she laughed.

“No,” I sighed. “It’s not that. I just need to get as far away as possible right now.”

“Fine, whatever,” she said, but I knew she was joking. Thank God that out of everyone who has to hear about what happened, it was Gooblin. “Are you at least going to stay the night?”

I took another look at the list of departures from Albany. “Yeah, thanks.” Paused. “You don’t happen to have a hundred dollars, do you?”

[aka-willow]

When We Come

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Words: 1298

Characters: Willow Wren, Father Jake, Gooblin, Pip, Pingu, Burr, Spark, Danny, Manny, Dew, Fanisimo, France, Sabbath

Prompt/Tag:

“have you lost your mind?”

“I’m a monster.”

Summary: Willow creates a new game plan, one that her siblings oppose

Timeline: December 2015

Song: Little Drummer Boy - Low

A/N: is my “raised catholic” showing? oop thanks fam

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I left that same night, Christmas Eve. The bombshell of a discovery on the flash drive was enough to get me running again, and now, I felt like I couldn’t stop. I had never felt this angry before. This robbed. My time as a kid… gone. I’m never getting that back. Those weren’t even assassinations… those were just murders. That family… they were innocent. They made us do that and we didn’t even fight back, we didn’t even try to stop them. All for whatever fucked up 4-D chess game they were trying to play.

I packed my bags and my laptop, zipping my coat shut for the freezing flight back. I could feel the wind gathering at my hands again—I was close to losing it.

“Are you seriously leaving now?” Pip asked. “Right now? After all…”

“Yup,” I said. “The only thing that’s going to make me feel better is a few more old Facility agents down. I’m going.”

“We should stop that plan,” Danny said. “I think we should put a pause on the Rat Revolution.”

“Are you kidding?” I asked. “They’re still out there, possibly hurting other people, other experiments. I know we’re not the only ones. You’re going to sit there and say we should stop?”

“It’s not safe,” Manny, said, agreeing with his twin. “We have to look out for ourselves.” He sighed. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else. I just… I need time.”

“Pingu,” I said, turning to her, the friend that always seemed onboard with my schemes. “Can you talk some sense into these guys?”

The look she gave me nearly made me lose it then and there. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m done trying to save the world. I’m so tired. This isn’t the way to do it.” Pingu looked up at the sky, then back at the sparks leaping from the fire. “The best thing we can do is live our lives as normally as possible. Put all this behind us. Don’t be what they made us.”

“Whatever, I’m going,” I said, again. “See you on the front-page tomorrow.”

“Are you out of your mind?” France said.

“We are what we are,” I said. “They gave us these gifts and they’re going to regret it.”

“No,” Pip said firmly. “This isn’t us.”

“I’m a monster,” I said. “You’re a monster. That’s what we are. That’s what they made us to be. You saw the files just like me. You saw what we did. So, instead of being useless and tapping out, it’s time to balance the scales.” I snapped my fingers, trying to remember the phrase. “It’s like in the Bible,” I said. “Penance.”

“I’m not doing this with you,” said Burr. “I love you, but I’m not doing this. Pingu’s right.”

I stared at the Lab Rats in disbelief, even though some part of me always knew this was coming. Even back at the Facility I had been the one with a grudge, the one who refused to give up on a fight. It’s what got me put in isolation so often. It’s the reason I remember being put in that chair so often. But I didn’t fight back on Monster. And now I have to.

“Well, I’m leaving. See you guys.” I started walking towards the open clearing beyond the tower, looking for a place to take off and start on back to my base. It was around nine at night, still early. I bet I could get another two agents out by tomorrow. There were footsteps in the grass behind me, someone running, and when I turned, I saw Fanisimo jogging after me.

“Wait, Heckergal, wait.”

“Are you coming?”

He cast his eyes down and shook his hand, his mouth turned downward. “No. But I have the chip for you. To inhibit your powers. Let me at least insert it before you go.” He held it out and I watched as the metal glinted in the moonlit.

“No,” I said quickly. “I changed my mind. I don’t need it.”

“Look, you really should…”

“No!” I said again. “I’m fine. I’ve got it under control.”

Fanisimo sighed and dug into his backpack. “Then at least take these.” He passed me a pair of goggles, metallic and built to last, well-made. “It’s for when you’re flying. You know, for the wind. I know you used to use all sorts of things. These are better, and there’s a bunch of screen functions on these too. Super useful.”

I took them from Fanisimo and tucked them over my head as I took a breath. “Thanks, dude.”

He ran a hand through his black hair and scratched under his nose as he looked down at the ground. “Yeah. You know we’re always here for you. Stay safe?”

“I’ll be safe,” I said, but as I took off, I had a feeling it would be a long time before we met again.

I flew back to New York City in record time, the goggles allowing me to go faster than ever without my eyes completely drying out or being sealed shut by the wind, and I played around with the display as I shot across the sky, the wind like a cannon around me. I looked up two more agents from my files. Oliver and Lisa Bassi. Married, met on the job, based on their shared Facebook account. Home for the holidays. Merry fucking Christmas.

I had too much nervous energy that night when I got in, around midnight, and instead of sleeping, I stood in the back of Father Jake’s midnight mass at St. Giles. I hadn’t been in a while, but if I was going to do what I planned to do, I should at least make an appearance. I knew I was spiraling, on a collision course to disaster, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was going to find Doctor Turner. Destroy the Monster Book. Those were my only objectives. What happened after didn’t matter.

HYDRA made a mistake. I have nothing left to lose now.

In the back of the candlelit mass, I said a prayer, even followed along in the second-hand bible that Father Jake had given me ages ago. This is what they wanted. This is what they’ll get. After the service, I found Father Jake back at the altar, long after everyone else had left. He put out the remaining candles and nearly didn’t see me in the deepening gloom of the church.

“Willow?” he asked. “You’re still here? Santa’s not going to come if you’re still up.” He chuckled a little at his own joke, but then sobered up. “Is everything okay? I know you’ve had a rough few weeks.”

“I don’t think Santa’s coming for me this year,” I said, reflecting back on his previous statement. “I guess… I just wanted to… I don’t know. I have a lot of things I regret and I don’t know what to do, or if was even my fault. I… found out about it. Tonight.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, not really,” I sighed. “Um… when it comes to penance, you’ve mentioned it before, what do I have to do? I mean, what do you usually tell people to do?”

“Do you want to do a confession?”

“Not really.”

The stained glass above the altar seemed to glow as the moonlight poured in. “Well, it comes down to serving others. What can you do to help others? Will that make it right?”

Oliver and Lisa Bassi were dead by seven the next morning. Two bullets from Heidi Rye’s gun. Two more HYDRA agents gone. By eight, I was visiting the old lady to deliver her daily grilled cheese sandwich and wish her a Merry Christmas so that she would not be alone.

[aka-willow]

Gone

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Words: 2012

Characters:  Willow Wren, Gooblin, Pip, Pingu, Burr, Spark, Danny, Manny, Dew, Fanisimo, France, Sabbath

Prompt/Tag:

“are you finishing that or…?”

“You’re going to get someone hurt.”

Summary: Willow speaks with the other Lab Rats about their past and future

Timeline: December 2015

Song: Gone - M83

A/N: the more you know

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The Lab Rats and I met at Gooblin’s fire tower on Christmas Eve. We set up sleeping bags in the tower and lit a bonfire down below. It should have felt like a party, being together for the first time since the summer, but it didn’t. It was somber instead.

On the heels of Marty’s death, the boys were sure that they were being trailed in Vegas, and Sabbath had botched a leak, accidentally forgetting to strip one of the files of metadata. It was a rough week and so we sat around the bonfire, staring down the end of our first year of freedom.

“Sometimes,” Pip said, slowly. “I think we should just turn ourselves in.” I shot a look at him.

“Why?” Burr asked. “Did you see something?”

“No,” said Pip, gazing into the fire. “I mean, not specifically. But when I do get those flashes of the future, I just see…” He looked at me and I frowned. “I just see… those planes that SHIELD used to have. It’s really dark. Surrounded. Loud. Maybe we should turn ourselves in before things get bad.”

“I’m not turning myself in,” said Pingu, poking the embers with a stick. “I hardly even use my powers. I’m not a threat.”

Except for D.C.

“Yeah, and neither is magic tricks,” said Manny, looking at Danny and France. “Pip, you know what we do. How can you say that’s dangerous?”

“I’m not saying it’s dangerous,” Pip said. “I’m saying that we’re perceived as threats.”

“Not me either,” said Sabbath, and Spark nodded her head in agreement. “Most of us are just trying to get our lives together. Even Dew is, which… I’m honestly kind of surprised.”

Dew laughed. “Well, superbrains aren’t exactly obvious. And the mirror thing isn’t either.”

“So, what?” I asked. “Who are you talking about?” I asked Pip. “Me? Fanisimo building things for us? Burr’s out there robbing banks in Europe.”

“I’m not violent,” Burr shot back. “It’s all behind the scenes.”

“So what, I build things?” said Fanisimo. “As long as I don’t open up a nether portal, I think we’re okay.”

That left me, and I felt their stares. “You want me to turn myself in,” I said. “That’s me you’re seeing in your vision.”

“I didn’t say that,” Pip mumbled.

“You implied it.”

“What’s going on in New York?” Danny asked. “I see the news, and maybe to outsiders it’s not suspicious, but to us? What are you doing? Every time I check in it’s like a new disaster or unsolved crime or—”

“I’m fine!” I said.

“You’re going to get someone hurt,” Sabbath said. “Or get yourself hurt.”

I ignored her and played with Marty’s flash drive in my hands. I had put it on a chain so I could wear it around my neck and the metal was cold between my fingers. Pip cleared his throat and asked Pingu about how school and home was, and the conversation shifted away from me. I grabbed my laptop from my backpack and plugged the flash drive in, trying key after key on WinRAR, nothing working. The file stayed zipped.

France and Pip got into a debate about whether France could use his powers to heal to resurrect someone who had died, as he had gotten some strange blood or healing abilities from the Blue Lab.

“You can’t resurrect someone,” France said. “It’s not possible. You can’t heal death.”

“But you haven’t tried,” Pip said. “Maybe you just need to try.”

“Wanna volunteer?”

The others laughed and it reminded me of something Marty had once told me. “Hey, Sabbath,” I said. She was sitting next to me. “You know the musical Cats?” I knew she was obsessed with musical theater, and if anyone appreciated the factoid, she would.

“What about it?”

“Well, if you trace the events from its production, it started with a German necromancer from the 1400s. So some guy tried to raise the dead in medieval times and we ended up with a musical about cats.”

“That can’t be real,” said Sabbath, pulling out her phone and opening the internet browser.

“It is,” I said, trying a few more book titles as keys on Marty’s file. On the other side of the fire, Spark and Gooblin stabbed sticks through marshmallows and began roasting them, as Spark joked about singing Christmas carols and Danny nudged Spark, pointing at a burnt marshmallow. “Are you finishing that or…”

“Wait…” Sabbath started. “John Faustus?”

“Yeah, I think,” I said. “Neat, right?”

“That was the name of the…” Sabbath started, and the rest of the circle got quiet as she typed something else into her phone.

“Name of…?”

“Doctor Faustus, deal with the devil… Faustus,” said Sabbath. “I remember now. That’s what they called it. At the Facility. With the words, that’s what they called it. Holy shit, that’s what it was. Do you guys remember? They used to use it when we started to… I don’t know… get out of line? They always said the same phrase, but I remember… there’s so much there…”

It was as if a ding went off in my head. Look up Doctor Faustus when you get a chance; it’s a wild read. I slowly typed doctorfaustus into the box, and suddenly the dialogue box cleared, and the folder opened up.

“Guys, guys, I got it,” I said in disbelief. “I got into the files Marty left me. The password was Doctor Faustus. Why is that…” The other Lab Rats on the other side of the circle got up and came around the fire to stand around me as I clicked to open the folder and extract the hidden files. “Marty was on to something,” I whispered. “Marty knew something…”

I opened the folder and the screen filled with a ton of subfolders. articles. hydra wikileaks. shield wikileaks. social media. scam stuff. willow. patterns.

I first clicked on scam stuff, my hands shaking, and when I opened up the folder, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. There were archived emails, text files, screenshots of a conversation Marty had with someone at a data recovery center. The words blackmail crossed the screen. A data dump of archived HYDRA documents.

How the hell did Marty get his hands on this?

“What the fuck?” France asked. “What was he doing?”

I opened his hydra wikileaks folder and found pages and pages of documents from the 2014 leak, all organized and collected, exploring every bit of data that was released. And then patterns. There was a single video, and I recognized the file name from Marty’s blackmail at the data recovery center. He had stolen it, stolen it straight from HYDRA. Marty did that. Somehow, that anxious, goofy, weirdo kid did that. He did that for us. And paid the price.

“Click on it,” Dew said.

“I don’t know…” I started.

“Click on it,” Manny interrupted. “We have to watch. We have to know.”

It was a stream of a video conference, and at the center of it was Doctor Dawn Turner, sitting on a desk with a stack of papers next to her. The video was titled report_5232014_turner. She began talking and her voice sent chill straight through my heart, and some of the other Lab Rats instinctively stepped back from the screen or avoided looking altogether. The words seemed to bleed together as she discussed progress and assignments and Fausta. Monster. It was so cold, so clinical, but we started to recognize our subject numbers. Subject 10. That was me. October.

“This is about us,” Pip murmured, and we shushed him.

Resets. The Monster Book. Triggers. Compliance.

The video ended and I saw our reflections on the black screen. My heart pounding, I opened up articles. The folder contained screenshots of news stories, some pulled straight from old newspapers. I clicked through them using the right arrow key, but I hadn’t made the connection, not yet.

“These are all really old,” Burr said. “Look, that one’s from 2008.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “These are all… deaths? Obituaries? But not even of anyone important.” I continued to sort through, but I felt the pit in my stomach deepen. “This is a family in Russia. Middle of nowhere. Look at that place.”

“That’s the house from…” Fanisimo started and we turned to look at him. “I remember that house. Those woods. The cold.”

“No, this can’t…” I started. “This isn’t right. You can’t remember it. We never left the Facility.”

The faces continued to pop up on the screen and even though I knew I shouldn’t, I wasn’t supposed to, I remembered. Every single one. I clicked faster and more articles continued to come up, more unnatural deaths, more…

“Go back to the video,” Burr said. “Go back.”

We watched it again, listening closely, until Pingu interrupted with an “oh my God.”

The Monster Book. October, shh. It’s time to play Monster. Sumerkey. Nothingness. The chair. The electricity. October, are you ready to comply?

“This isn’t real,” I said. “It can’t be,” and my breaths were shallow and heavy like I had just run a marathon. “We didn’t do this. We couldn’t have. We’d…”

“Remember,” Fanisimo finished.

“They weren’t training us all those years at the Facility,” Dew whispered. “We were already working the whole time. We were… you know…”

“Killing,” I said. “That’s what Monster was. Sumerkey was the start of a series, but of course I wouldn’t remember beyond that. We’d… change somehow. Complete the assignment. Return back to the Facility. There would be a reset. And over, and over, and over.”

“How many times,” Sabbath asked, and I turned to look at her, seeing tears reflecting the bonfire’s light. “How many times were we reset? What did we do?”

“That’s why I wrote the word,” I said, thinking out loud, speaking slowly as I put it back together. “Sumerkey, on my arm. That was the last thing I remembered every time. And I realized that if I wrote it on my arm, I could pull myself out. Remember who I was before that. Or… at least… fight it. That’s why.”

The fire crackled and hissed as we played the video again, and again, as I tried to absorb Marty’s last gift to all of us. This is why they came for him, took his devices. He must have left digital fingerprints. Of course. He didn’t understand what he was dealing with. And that’s why he hid the drive.

Did he know? Did he know they were coming for him?

I looked at the dates on the drive. Marty knew. He knew all of this about you. And he still… I wanted to cry, but instead I swallowed the lump in my throat, looking into the fire as if it could evaporate the tears out of my eyes. Marty, why did you have to go looking? Why did you have to do this?

We were always the bad guys. We weren’t innocent in all this. That family…

“I can’t believe that…” Pip started, but he couldn’t finish the sentence, choking up over his own words.

“Why?” Pingu asked. “Why did they have to? 2008—we were seven. Seven years old.”

“I’m done with this shit,” Sabbath said, walking away from the fire. “I’m done. I didn’t want to know all this.”

“Fuck this,” said Danny. “I’m done, too. Why…”

The tears were contagious in our gathering and as we silently wept that Christmas Eve, we remembered. Remembered what we had done, everything we were supposed to forget. It came in flashes, in jolts of electricity, and the same series of words over and over and over. The fear when I saw Doctor Turner come in with the Monster Book. I remembered that now. Not being able to stop it. Even if the reset made us forget, that little girl still remembered every time the door opened, and the book was set down on the table.

And Marty knew. Marty knew.

They wanted us to be killers? I’ll show them a killer.

[aka-willow]

Familiar

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Words: 1041

Characters: Willow Wren, Ethan Kim, Gooblin, Pip, Pingu, Burr, Spark, Danny, Manny, Dew, Fanisimo, France, Sabbath

Prompt/Tag:

“You’ve got to be more careful.”

“You can’t keep ignoring this.”

Summary: Willow hacks the fourth ex-Facility scientist but doesn’t confront them

Timeline: November 2015

Song: 4am - Bastille

A/N: i love them all they’re so stupid

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I sat in my room, video chatting with the other Lab Rats as we briefed each other on the last few weeks. I found myself leaving out parts, like the fact that instead of just going through the files we had and leaking one scientist’s information at a time, I was confronting them in person. Which is why I won’t be doing that anymore. That incident at the library was way too close.

Still, confronting them had yielded some interesting results, such as the one-worded memory I had regained, and the theory that a book had been involved with our project. Pingu and I had told them about Subject Zero, but none of us remembered her and there were no leads on her besides the few random references in the files Fanisimo had uncovered.

“Okay, guys, I need us to all put our one braincell to work on this one,” I said. “Think really hard. Does anyone remember a book? Or—” I rolled up my sleeve “—this word?” We can’t keep ignoring this.

“For the thousandth time, no,” said Manny. “Look, they’d take us into the Blue Lab or whatever and that’s it. I remember nothing from there.”

“There’s twelve of us,” I said. “I mean, out of all of us we should be able to piece something together, right?”

“There was a test…a… what’s the word…” Sabbath said suddenly. “A… process? They had a name for it. I heard it once and I remember thinking that’s what’s wrong with us, that’s why I don’t remember. It was around the time we escaped, so there was no reset to wipe those memories.”

“So, what’s the name of the process?” Burr asked.

“Well, I don’t remember,” said Sabbath. “That’s the point. I just remembering knowing.”

“Anything?” I asked. “A letter, the way it sounds…?”

“It began with F,” said Sabbath. “Like flower or frost…”

“Poll the audience?” I asked the others, checking the time. “I have to go in a few minutes.” Ethan would be over soon.

“Fuck? That’s an F word,” France says. “Or… hey… me. France.”

“Think about this logically,” said Fanisimo. “HYDRA’s naming of things was like a whole department. It would have to have meaning. Think things that might relate. German names, or…”

“Beethoven,” said Pingu. “That’s German.”

“That doesn’t begin with F,” said Gooblin.

“He’s Austrian, isn’t he?” Pip asked.

“God, we’re braindead,” Dew said. “Uh… frost-y? That’s the thing they have a Wendy’s. And like maybe it has something to do with the cold?”

“I had Wendy’s for the first time last week,” Spark interjected. “That shit’s good.”

“These words seem too easy,” said Danny. “Too… what’s the word… not formal enough. You know?”

“Colloquial,” Burr supplied.

“I’d know it when I hear it,” said Sabbath. The conversation drifted to a 4am call that some of the boys were trying to get together, and Burr berating Danny and Manny for exposing their powers in Vegas as part of a magic set. Special effects could explain the display, but some of the Lab Rats were still on edge about it.

“You’ve got to be more careful,” she said. “Stop posting those videos on Youtube.”

“Dew posted on Youtube,” tattled Manny.

I heard our apartment buzzer ring and when I checked my phone, I saw Ethan had texted me.

Ethan: Here!

I hurried to clean up my mess of a desk and leaned back into the camera view for a moment. “Got to go,” I said. “Let’s talk soon. Keep spitballing words. If we got the name of whatever they did to us, well, it’s a start. Also books. Get on that.” I heard one of the other Lab Rats say something along the lines of ew homework as I disconnected. I was slightly jealous of a few of them because it seemed that they had moved on from the Facility faster than I had, especially considering they left after me. Pingu seemed to be doing well with her family in D.C., Gooblin had started some writing project, a group of the boys were still doing tricks in Vegas, Dew had just launched the music video we had helped him film, and on and on and on. It seemed like I was one of the only ones really fixated on getting back the memories we lost and figuring out what really happened. I needed that to move on.

The others were content to just forget, and I really couldn’t blame them.

After checking myself in the bathroom mirror, I nearly tripped over my backpack in the entryway as ran over to buzz Ethan in and let him up. I surveyed the apartment while I waited, making sure everything looked normal. Of course it would look normal. Why wouldn’t it?

In the final minutes before Ethan got upstairs, I double-checked the leak on the fourth Facility scientist I had planned and activated a VPN just before I hit send. Seconds later, Ethan was knocking on our apartment door and I slammed my laptop shut as I let him in. “Hey, dude.”

“Hi,” he said, waving in the awkward way he always did, which I had become accustomed to in the last few months. “Ready to make some babies?” He gave a nervous laugh. “Sorry… that was stupid I meant like do the baby project with the Punnett squares and stuff. Don’t know why I thought that would be funny…”

I laughed, despite myself. “You’re good. Let’s go sit.”

As Ethan and I worked through our biology homework and I tried to figure out how bat wings would play into our fake child’s genes (not that I would tell Ethan), I spent the other work time discreetly monitoring the file leak and the aftermath. The Lab Rat group chat finalized plans for a virtual sleepover and discussion session the following night. Even though we annoyed each other tremendously, I was still excited about the call.

I still had other things on my mind, though. I wanted to confront this scientist, Taddeo Moser, and ask him my questions but I knew it was too risky. This can work just as well.

But this fourth leak wasn’t nearly as satisfying. I found myself wanting a piece of the action. I need to look them in the eye.

[aka-willow]

Take Me Home, Part 4

gif

Words: 436

Characters: Willow Wren, Gooblin, Pip, Pingu, Burr, Spark, Danny, Manny, Dew, Fanisimo, France, Sabbath

Prompt/Tag: “I’d ask you to stay but I don’t like you.”

Summary: Willow and the Lab Rats make a plan for moving forward

Timeline: July 2015

Song: You Don’t Own Me - Grace, G-Eazy

A/N: part 4/4

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The next morning, we got up late and raided the hotel buffet, all twelve of us descending onto it like a swarm of locusts, picking the pastry table clean, half of us hungover from drinking more alcohol than we had in our entire lives. For some of us, that was any.

“Guys, our fire made the news!” Pip announced, holding up his phone.

“Is that supposed to be a good thing?” Sabbath laughed.

Among our smorgasbord of food, we discussed our plans for the future. We created a group chat to stay in touch, and I came up with what may have been my best idea of 2015. “Okay,” I said. “So. The Hydra agents. I have a plan.” We passed around all the files we collected, copies that Pingu and I had scanned in the hotel business center that morning. “Whoever takes out the most at the end of each month wins.”

“Wins what?” Burr asked.

“Uh… bragging rights?” I said. “Ooh! Lets put money in a pool every month.”

“I don’t know,” said Sabbath. “This seems a little…”

“Insane?” France asked. “Yeah.”

“C’mon,” I said. “They ruined our lives. Let’s at least have a little fun while we clean them up and turn them in. I’m tired of feeling like everything that happened is my fault. Because it’s not. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I could be on board with this,” said Dew. “Actually, I’m totally in.”

“Me too,” said Fanisimo.

One by one, we put our hands in together, solidifying our pact to end the nightmare we were born in to. No one else would be subject to what we were subject to. We would see to this.

“Team Lab Rats on three,” Gooblin suggested. “One. Two. Three.”

“Lab Rats!”

We departed, one by one, making promises to meet up again soon and check on in as we took on this new mission, the Rat Revolution as we were calling it, or RatRev for short.

“Hey, stay in touch,” Fanisimo told me. “We lost you once.”

“I know,” I said.

“I’d ask you to stay but I don’t like you.”

I laughed. “You going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I’m going to start school in the fall. Keep building things.” He was wearing a pair of metal gauntlets that he fiddled with as he talked. “You need anything? Gear, I mean?”

“Like… a suit?”

Fanismo nodded slowly, and I could almost see the gears turning. “Yeah. I could do that. Let’s talk. Send me some ideas.”

“Awesome,” I said. “I’ll call you. See you around good buddy.”

“See you around.”