First off; Salaam Alaakum, United States! Been a hot minute.
Now that I’m back and got the obligatory ‘get fucking shitfaced’ portion of my return to the west done with, I think it’s about time to start posting fics again. Iraq was a hoot, had some good times, some bad times, and made a lot of friends amongst the local population.
Without further ado, Raise Hell. (It’s a song, Brandi Carlile. I’d suggest looking it up.)
The woman takes the stage, guitar held limply in one hand. The suit she wears is rumpled, and her tie is undone. In her other hand, she holds a freshly opened fifth of whiskey- when she sits on the stool in front of the microphone, she downs the bottle in a single long pull, not even wincing, to the cheers and jeers of the less cultured patrons. In this bar, there’s not many cultured ones.
Or innocent ones, for that matter.
Despite the surroundings, and her disheveled state, the woman’s brown eyes roam alertly over the crowd, and a slight smile plays over her lips. She begins to strum a twangy, upbeat tune on her guitar, humming in beat to the music.
When she starts singing, it’s a clear and cold clarion call, eyes focused somewhere in the distance.
“I been down with a broken heart since the day I learned to speak,” she sings, eyes narrowing. “The devil gave me a crooked storm when he gave me crooked feet, but Gabriel done came to me and kissed me in my sleep… And I’ll be sinning like an angel until the day I’m six feet deep.”
Wendy Corduroy grips the wheel of her beat-up sedan with one hand, her free fingers tapping a nervous beat on her thigh. The lights of the gas station are welcoming, if only for the promise of energy drinks or coffee- dark bags hang under the young woman’s eyes, and this is the first gas station she's seen in miles, but she’s resolved to press on gamely.
She’s got places to go, people to see, and things to do. A lot of that last one, actually.
The coffee and gas don’t cost much, and she steps outside, letting the winter chill bite into her skin. There’s a blonde man under the awning, staring out into the night with an expression that accurately sums up exactly how done with life Wendy feels at the moment.
How done with life, that is, when she’s not furiously, terrifyingly angry.
Or scared. She’s used to nerves, she’s hid them all her life, but this is something new.
The blonde man glances at her. “Hell of a night, huh?” he asks, eyebrow raised, voice made deeper and dryer by exhaustion.
“You’re telling me,” Wendy snorts, taking a sip of her coffee. She shivers a bit, but lets the chill sink into her bones, knowing it will help her stay awake. The scalding heat of the coffee helps counteract it, anyways. “Where you headed?”
“East,” the man grunts. “You?”
“South,” Wendy replies. There’s something comforting in such a banal conversation with a stranger.
The blonde man grunts. “Why south? Trying to get warmer?”
She shakes her head, and practices her lie. “Family kicked me out,” she says, wincing at how hollow it sounds, how the twins would never buy it. And how badly she needed them to buy it. It had been years, but… they had, in the words of someone somewhere at some time, seen some shit, and seen it together. That counted for a lot. “Well, I gotta keep moving. Drive safe, dude.”
The man nods, and replies the same. When Wendy’s tail lights recede in the distance, he pulls a phone from his pocket and makes a call.
“I found myself an omen and tattooed on a sign, I set my mind to wandering and walked a broken line. You have a mind to keep me quiet and although you can try, better men have hit their knees and bigger men have died.”
The crowd shifts, undercurrents of worry flowing through them, as the woman continues to sing. In the lighting, her eyes seem almost like liquid silver. “I’m gonna raise, raise hell,” she sings, voice rising loud enough to hurt.
A wistful smile comes over her face. “Go on and ring that bell.”
Jim Alvarez puts the phone away, glancing around Lazy Susan’s diner. “Girl’s on the move,” he says to Hammer, who’s occupying the seat next to him on the booth. The booth across the table from them remains empty, despite the fact that Hammer takes up ninety percent of a single booth. “Headed south.”
Hammer sighs, turning the page on his newspaper. “You were right,” he says, baritone voice rumbling. “That’s trouble.”
Jim snorts. “What isn’t, these days?” he asks.
“What’s your plan to counter it?” Hammer asks, almost mildly. Almost. There’s an undercurrent of tension in his voice.
Jim smiles without humor. “She decided to hit below the belt,” he says, gently taking the newspaper from the much larger man, closing it to the cover, and tapping on the cover photo. “Two can play at that game.”
Hammer raises his eyebrow. “What’re you going to tell them?”
Jim shrugs. “The truth.”
“Is that wise?”
He doesn’t answer. It’s not.
But they’re running out of cards to play.
“Showtime,” Hammer mutters, and both men rise to their feet as a woman comes through the door.
Hammer manages a cultured little bow Jim would never be able to manage in a million years, and gets one returned to him. Jim just meets the cool eyes staring back at him, and sticks out his hands to shake. “Miss Northwest,” he says, meeting her not-smile with his own. “Why don't you sit down? We have a lot to talk about.”
The first patron tries the door and finds it sealed shut, immovable, even under his brawny fists. The woman, eyes completely silver now, suit rippling in ways that shouldn’t be possible, smiles like a shark even as she sings.
“I came across a lightning strike and eyes of bright clear blue,” she wails, still grinning. “I took that tie from around my neck and gave my heart to you.”
“I sent my love across the sea and though I didn’t cry…”
“That voice will haunt my every dream until the day I die.”
Mabel snuggles a bit further into Dipper’s arms, mind still whirling.
Wendy. Coming down here, to find work. The girl hadn’t mentioned what was wrong the first time she called, or the second, just a few days later, but even though years had passed without contact, she still knew the older girl well enough to tell when the stress was leaking through.
The newfound contact was a bit of a sticking point with the ‘rents, though, and for once, Dipper had borne the brunt of it.
“Fuck Doc Caulk,” he had snarled, putting one hand down on the dining room table, eyes cool and hard, weathering the objections and disgusted sighs thrown his way. “I don't care what that crackpot of a therapist said.”
What the therapist had said, without using so many words, was that the twins needed to sever their connections not with Gravity Falls, but the friends they had made there. There was a reason the twins had lapsed into stubborn silence not too many sessions after that had been raised.
Despite the stubborn silence, though, they had allowed almost all contact to be severed, and that shame hung covered them both like a shroud during that argument.
Still, they had won, almost by default. Wendy was renting a short-term apartment in town, and the ‘rents really had no recourse short of confining the twins to the house.
Whatever’s bothering you, Wendy, Mabel vows, staring sightlessly at the flickering TV screen, pulling strength from her brother’s arm over her shoulder and his side against hers, we’ll fix it.
They would. They had to. That’s what the Mystery Twins did.
The bottle flies through the air, the aim straight and true. Beer slips from the top, pine wheeling in foaming arcs after it, and it crashes into the silver-eyed woman’s forehead in an explosion of shattering glass that could have downed a troll. She takes no notice.
“I dug a hole inside my heart to put you in your grave,” she calls, slowly standing from the stool. “At this point it was you or me, and mamma didn't raise no slave.”
The rancher is a big man, and his close-cropped hair reflects the moonlight like steel as he inspects his delivery.
His feet are braced, his eyes narrowed, jaw slowly clenching and unclenching in thought. He reeks of confidence, of easy strength, of a man who knew his way around the world and could take anything life dished his way with a smile.
In truth, he’s little more than a rat desperate to flee a sinking ship.
He opens the first massive box, and looks down at the massive man in plaid slumbering restlessly inside. A ghost of a whisper tumbles from slumbering lips, wreathed by a crimson beard showing the first signs of errant grey, and the rancher sighs.
“Take them downstairs,” he says quietly, grimacing. “Make them comfortable. They’ll be here a while.”
He blows out a long sigh, and closes his eyes. “If they’re lucky, they’ll stay asleep the whole time.”
The chirruping crickets in the grass seem to mock him and his men as they move the lumberjack and his family, and the moon stares down like an accusatory silver eye.
Fear builds in the crowd, and they rush her. She drops the guitar to meet them.
The song doesn’t stop.
“You took my face in both your hands and looked me in the eye… And I went down with such a force that in your grave I’ll lie.”
The screams of anger and pain rise, but never threaten to overwhelm the song. Not by half.
“You're sure?” Pacifica Northwest asks, eyes spearing into Jim.
“I am,” he replies easily.
Pacifica stares out at the night that had rapidly swallowed Gravity Falls. “If you’re telling the truth, and not mistaken- both big ifs, I should say- I don't see an easy way out of this trap.”
Jim shrugs uncomfortably. “I’m not sure I do, either.”
Pacifica drains her coffee and moves to stand. “I'll do my best to verify everything you’ve had to say. Until then…” She sighs, and some of the cultured accent slips from her voice. “I know her. She’ll figure out a way to fuck those assholes over. Trust Wendy, and trust the Pines.”
A weak smile dances around her lips. “After all, you said you made a deal not to talk to the twins. You never said anything about not talking to Wendy.”
She walks out without another word, and Jim blinks, mouth open. “Fucking rich people,” he says, eyes wide. “Hammer, we’ve been totally blind.”
“Raise hell,” Anubis mutters, stepping over bodies. The bar is empty, but for her.
No one had been able to leave.
Dipper centers himself, staring at the tree he’s chose as a target.
Ever since the fight with the ghoul, at Sam’s house, he had been building his skill with more… forceful… spells than simple witchfire.
Now he had to see if the practice worked or not. He extends one hand, slowly, the way the books had showed him, and he focuses on the tree, visualizing the impact.
“Left hook,” he whispers, and lets the power fly.
The outer bark of the tree shatters, sending splinters flying, and he allows himself a small, satisfied smile.
“Raise hell,” Anubis whispers again, striding through the unlocked door of the bar, feeling the flames start to rise behind her.
Wendy takes the steps to the front porch in one long stride, squinting in the early morning light, and knocks once.
She hasn't even put her arm down yet when the Pines Twins yank the door open, and they both spend a long moment cataloging the differences, big and small, between this moment and the moment they had left each other at the bus stop so long ago.
And then she’s been pulled into a firm embrace by both, and as her arms wrap around them, she-incredibly- feels a smile start to form on her own face.
Maybe things weren't so hopeless after all.
“Come on,” Anubis says, a humorless smile tweaking around her lips, the roaring fire from behind her casting shifting patterns over the Arizona desert. “Come on, and ring that bell.”
She laughs, as she begins to walk. First Jim. Then the twins, and the girl. Then, they could wipe this tiny little slate clean, and move to the next spinning clod of dirt.
And later, when they had accrued enough power? The Outsider itself would fall, would pay for the treachery it necessitated, the lives it had taken. It knows, in its own, unfeeling way, what she has planned, and it doesn't disapprove. Many had tried.
It was still there. Not much could threaten the storm.
you know these filler outsider pov episodes in tv shows? i need more of these but for fics – please show me how fucking ridiculous my two gay blorbos interacting w/ each other looks like. i need to see more of outsiders thinking wtf are these two on
concept: a fragment of an arceus from another reality falls into pl:a verse and is Hecking Miffed™ that it's been so nerfed and can't get back home and starts committing some really next level eldritch crimes. it's particularly eager to fight anyone and anything associated with this world's arceus, and volo in particular catches its attention. (: (and it wants to eat akari's arc phone in the hopes that maybe it can absorb a piece of arceus' power)
this fragment just looks like beta arceus btw because i think that's funny. i think there should be more chaos blobs.
