Im writing a sports festival arc rewrite fic bc i have several issues with it but anyways. I was generally just recalling the order of events and randomly remembered that bakugo eavesdrops on the conversation between shoto and izuku where shoto explains his scar. And like, there’s 0 narrative purpose for him being there. Horikoshi seems to just have a weird urge to insert him into literally EVERY scene, even when he doesn’t need to be there.
Anyways, i was trying to figure out how to work it into my fic when i remembered, oh yeah, this is MY FIC. I don’t have to deal with the consequences of horikoshi’s questionable writing choices. I can just delete him from the scene!
So yeah, frick bakugo, he doesn’t get to butt in on a private moment between two characters anymore
Two back-to-back meetings with Rogues have once again required that Grian and his magical partner Xelqua must be supervised in case of some kind of residual magical effects. Given that none of Grian's friends know that he and Xelqua form the Magical Girl Aria, he won't be getting sick, but it does mean that the two of them can search Scar's house for clues as to what happened to Scar's brother. They might sniff out some more secrets than they were expecting!
On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68381631
Grian refuses to wait inside the apartment building since he knows the spiders are gone. Instead, he flops down on the roof and stares at the sky with Xelqua on his chest. He was just up there! Flying!
“That was amazing,” he grins. “I wish, I wish we could do that without having to fight anybody…”
That would attract far too much attention. But, the Song, and the feeling of the wind, and flying!
He is torn between scooping Xelqua up to run around the roof in excitement and going to sleep for a week. Being a Magical Girl is exhausting. Xelqua agrees, muffling a dainty yawn in one of his fluffy wings.
“Maybe not right now, huh?” Grian asks, still grinning.
Xelqua nods sleepily and wriggles a little to keep himself awake.
“I’m glad you like it,” he murmurs. “I wasn’t sure if Aria only did because of me.”
“No, no, I love it!” Grian insists, waving a hand above them. “It’s so- it’s perfect!”
“Perfect…” Xelqua repeats, shoving his face under a wing. “It’s only our first time! We’re not even really good at working together yet.”
Grian huffs. “We also fought the Warden!”
Xelqua extracts his head from his feathers and stares.
“Yeah, okay, fine, that barely counts,” Grian sighs.
“Well, regardless, how have you been? We’ve had a busy day,” Xelqua says, and Grian giggles at how casual that statement is.
“Uh… all of our stuff is mostly okay, so that’s good,” Grian begins. “Some of the little bits got knocked off and I have no idea if Mumbo can get the bits back. A lot of Scar’s house is covered in marks – like Scar’s face, the same color.”
Xelqua startles, eyes wide, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“Then we scooped you back up and went shopping, which you were there for, kind of. Did you see anything while you were exploring?”
“Maybe something related to the markings. I found a – is the word den? Hideaway? – a little place I thought was a cat house at first, but inside… It had writing.” He pats Grian’s chest to emphasize how serious this is. “Spirit writing, the language of enchantment. It was a list of things.”
Curling around Xelqua, Grian sits up to look at his partner properly.
“Definitely writing? Where was it hidden, just in a wall?”
Fluttering to keep his place in Grian’s arms, Xelqua raises his paws and tries to convey the space he had found. “Not exactly? You know the corners of the rooms that have cabinets in them? The space where the corners are? There was a little door and I went in.”
Grian nods intensely, fishing in his pockets for his phone. “What did it say? Here, I’ll write it down…”
Amazingly, his phone has survived whatever pocket dimension his stuff melted away into - but has gained about six billion notifications. Oops? Well. Turning in the cores did take a while…
He ignores them anyway and opens a new note. Xelqua crawls up onto Grian’s shoulders to look.
“Okay, if I remember right, it was a list of things – in English, I think it’d be skulk, area, Doc something? And clocks,” Xelqua taps his claws for each item.
“Doc something? Is it hard to translate, or…?”
“No, it was smudged. Whatever it said was pretty short, though.”
Grian adds that to his note, and then half the screen is taken up by a call. He… probably shouldn’t ignore this one.
“Oh, Scar’s gonna be mad… Hi! I found my phone again!” Grian lies.
Scar yells wordlessly on the other side, then his voice fades slightly.
“Grian? Are you okay?” comes Mumbo’s voice.
Xelqua bounces in shock, and Grian can feel him sniffing at the phone in confusion.
“Yes! When I hid in the building, my bag fell and I’ve been looking for all the stuff,” he elaborates, and hopes no one came to look for him while he was Aria.
“Don’t do that!” Scar yells, slightly closer to the phone.
“You’re still on the roof of that building?” Mumbo asks, stressed.
“Yeah,” Grian says, nodding. “I’m going to try to – if I put you on speaker, I might be able to look up where I am?”
Communicating Grian’s location is far harder than it needs to be, but eventually Scar, Mumbo, and a response team navigate to the apartment building. Grian repeats his lie several times – to Scar, to the medic who checks him for magic sickness, to their coworkers Joe and Cleo who have apparently been assigned to report on this Rogue. He barely remembers most of it as the conversations blur with exhaustion. Xelqua is so lucky that he can sleep in Grian’s bag.
Additionally, Grian misses that he apparently agreed to stay at Scar’s for the night because he might have magic sickness. Again. And Pearl is worried about him. Again. Unfortunately for her mental health, she cannot babysit him (again) tonight, but she has nominated Jimmy for the task.
Jimmy is delighted to be here.
“Grian! What did you do!?”
Grian’s head snaps up sleepily, half-expecting to hear him follow up with, “I’m telling Mum!” Given that they’re adults, all Jimmy does is stomp over to the ambulance and fold his arms.
“Hey-y-y Tim, I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Grian snarks automatically. “It’s not like I survived two Rogue attacks back-to-back or anything.”
They look at each other for a few seconds, and then Grian topples forward into his brother’s shoulder. Jimmy immediately curls around him, squeezing tightly. This is the single benefit of his little brother being taller than him.
“I hate getting calls from Pearl like this,” Jimmy says, slightly muffled.
“I’m sorry,” Grian says, because saying that he didn’t try to get into this situation is approaching a lie.
Jimmy leans back to examine Grian, who notices something in turn; thin, glowing lines, like Xelqua’s eyespots, but instead shaped like fish scales. They trail under his eyes and across his arms, barely bigger than fingernails. There are even scales glowing through the fabric of Jimmy’s beloved and deeply ugly fish hat where it is tied around his neck. Grian’s jaw clenches. Why does everyone he knows have magic scars? At least he can guess when Jimmy would’ve been exposed to a Rogue.
“I’m okay, still. They’ve cleared me again.”
“’Again’ is doing so much in that sentence,” Jimmy observes wryly. “Please tell me you didn’t get up to any of your old antics.”
Grian huffs playfully, because Jimmy doesn’t know the half of it. “Oh please. I only rode on a purple crystalline dragon until giant spiders jumped us.”
“You kicked one!” Scar pops up, from gods only know where.
Grian and Jimmy squeal in the same pitch.
“Whoops!” Scar chirps, unrepentant.
Mumbo waves awkwardly, and Grian drags a breath through his teeth. It makes a terrible noise, but Scar continues to smile pleasantly.
“Tim, these are my friends, Mumbo,” Mumbo starts waving again, even more awkwardly. “And Scar.” Scar tips his hat and bows. “And boys, this is my little brother Timmy.”
Jimmy, exasperated, groans and tips forward. “My name is Jimmy, Grian’s just a gremlin.”
Grian smiles guilelessly.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you! Grian’s mentioned you before,” Mumbo says politely. He swaps to adjusting his cuffs since he decides waving this long is probably weird.
“Only good things?” Jimmy asks, jokingly.
“Oh, of course!” Scar chirps. “He’s got so many stories from your high school days!”
He means well.
Jimmy, as a person who was there, reacts to that statement with the appropriate amount of disbelief. He doesn’t call Grian out, but his eyebrows do climb high enough that Grian knows he’ll have to explain later.
Grian shrugs up at him, and forcibly changes the subject.
“Pearl has forcibly volunteered Tim to look after us tonight.”
Jimmy grumbles a little at the nickname but squares his shoulders and puts a smile back on his face.
“I’m happy to do it! And if the Response Team has cleared you, that’s great.”
The three of them are cleared to go home. Mumbo is not allowed to drive. There is a discussion Grian mostly ignores over whose car they’re going to take back, which Mumbo wins because they have bags and stuff that won’t fit into Jimmy’s little car. Grian is not allowed to call it a space buggy again. If he didn’t have very strong memories of soaring off hills in it, he might actually listen to that rule.
Jimmy is better at driving now, though that doesn’t stop Mumbo from white-knuckling every corner. Scar attempts to distract him by wheedling him into having opinions on what to make for dinner tonight – Scar’s suggestions are lists of different kinds of sweets they absolutely do not have enough time to prepare. Most of Grian’s suggestions are actually helpful. No one likes them, but they are.
- - - - -
Grian really wants a nap. He loves his friends, really, but trying to fit all five of them into the kitchen is a mistake. They have more than five different ideas for dinner and usually Grian would pick something and assign everyone tasks, but he is so tired. Instead, his only tasks are: retrieve dirty dishes, clean them, stay out of the others’ way, and – of course – investigate Scar’s house for more evidence of whatever Xelqua saw.
The Watcher himself is probably asleep in Grian’s bag. Grian debates whether it would be worth waking him when the others are done making whatever argument/meal Grian is studiously ignoring. Since they’re each making (and fiddling with each other’s) meals, there will probably be enough for leftovers. It’ll be fine.
The glowing on the undersides of furniture might not be fine. None of it is in Xelqua’s purple, ranging from orange, to blue, to pink, with that blue being the brightest. What has been hiding under Scar’s things like it’s stalking him? There is nothing carved into the brightly lit corners that Grian can see, but he takes pictures anyway. Given that his phone does not have magical sight, it doesn’t actually pick up the markings, so he then has to note whatever he sees down in a separate document with a number for each picture, which keeps him plenty busy when he isn’t wrestling Jimmy for batter-covered spoons.
Or Jellie. Jellie has made it her mission to jump on the counter and eat whatever she finds, and while Scar insists that it’s his job, Grian still finds himself calling out, “Jellie! No!” like she’s going to listen. He feels terrible about her little stripes, all highlighted in the same blue as the brightness under the tables and the blue from across Scar’s skin.
Across many of Scar’s scars, which had been horrific enough on its own, but Grian knows – has seen the photographic evidence all over the house – that Scar’s nickname wasn’t always so visually apparent. The youngest of the kid-Scars has only the one; the slash-mark under his right eye that has been almost covered by three other blue, diagonal marks on adult-Scar. Why hasn’t he said… anything?
Until… oh dear, was it really only a day ago? Until Grian gained the ability to see magic, he just accepted Scar’s excuse of being clumsy. It’s not like Scar isn’t clumsy! He’s been walking into chairs and dropping cutlery the whole afternoon. But, as Grian is shuffling around collecting and cleaning knives, he imagines Scar waking up with bruises or cuts he doesn’t remember getting and just …shrugging it off. Unaware that some mysterious entity is in his house.
It’s extremely, distressingly easy to imagine. Scar is not the most observant of men.
Grian, however, notes that several of the plates have magical markings on them, too. Blotches that don’t match the painted flowers around the edges. He hasn’t seen a knife with markings yet. He wonders if that’s because he’d have to find the Rogue first.
The markings don’t scrub off the first time he tries, either. Or the second. Or third. He’s concerned that garden-variety dish soap is not strong enough for magic.
“Are you feeling okay, Gri?” Scar asks.
Garden-variety dish soap does make the plate slippery enough that Grian has to fumble to catch it before it hits the floor.
“Ah! Don’t sneak up like that!”
“…By standing in the middle of the kitchen?”
Mumbo and Jimmy, the traitors, are giggling.
“Sure! But, um, are you feeling okay? You’ve been glaring at that plate for a while…” Scar asks again, and Jimmy’s giggle stops dead.
Before Grian can formulate an answer, Jimmy loops around Scar and pushes back Grian’s bangs. He squawks when Grian reflexively bops him with the plate.
“Hey! I’m just trying to check if you’ve got a fever or something, don’t make me wet!” he whines, and Grian glares.
“I’m just tired! You didn’t have to deal with two Rogue attacks in two days,” Grian grumbles, putting the dish down and wondering how he can shuffle it around to wipe again. He doesn’t have to fake the yawn that cuts him off. “I’m just making the plates extra cl- mm. Extra clean.”
Jimmy hums and starts tugging Grian’s shoulders. “No, I think Scar’s right-“
“I am?” Scar asks.
“- and you should go sit down for a bit. Dinner is almost ready, just don’t fall asleep at the table.”
Grian glares at them, but the sight of the bright rings of magical color in both Jimmy and Scar’s eyes makes him relent and he allows them to maneuver him into a seat. He puts his head down and fiddles with his phone until dinner.
- - - - - -
Fate might like Aria, but it hates Grian. He’s certain. Something that liked him would let him actually sleep. Instead, he’s glaring at the whorls on the painted ceiling and the lights that flash by whenever some poor, equally insomniac soul drives down Scar’s quiet street.
His only consolation is that Xelqua, having napped through most of the day, is now awake. The Watcher doesn’t seem to realize that Grian is awake, wiggling around out of Grian’s eyeline and freezing for a moment whenever he knocks into something.
“Hey Xelqua! Are you hungry?”
Xelqua shrieks, scrabbles, and Grian sits up to see him at the bottom of the shelving unit next to the door. He’s half-hidden behind some of Scar’s miniature buildings, and his eye-markings glow brightly.
“Grian!” Xelqua yelps. “You’re awake? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“
“I’ve been awake the whole time, don’t worry,” Grian says, only slightly irritated by the fact. Only slightly!
Xelqua eels out from behind a miniature soda fountain and flaps up to the bed, spilling over the blankets near Grian’s knee. Looks like Xelqua hasn’t woken up all the way. Huh, his markings aren’t even fully open, that’s cute.
“Really? But it’s so late…” Xelqua wriggles around until he’s satisfied with the positions of his wings.
Grian shrugs and looks up as another car passes by.
“I don’t know, it’s fine. Are you hungry? You slept through dinner, and I have little snacks – we could go down and get you some of the leftovers, too.”
“Oh, that sounds nice, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble,” Xelqua says, almost embarrassed.
“Sure! It’s not like I’m sleeping anyway. Let’s see if I can find my way back down.”
Grian is not actually sure ‘down’ is the correct directional adjective for their path. Earlier, they went up and down several ramps and staircases, but Grian is pretty sure some of those were just because Scar was dropping Jimmy and Mumbo off at their rooms. He thinks that if he goes down the stairs at the end of this hall, turns right, goes through the green hallway and the room with the seashell collection and the jeans sofa, then down the blue hallway, he will find the kitchen. Or a kitchen. If it has food in it, it will work.
Xelqua rides on his shoulder, listening to him quietly recount some of the silly stories he’d heard during dinner. He keeps having to pause and reorient himself, or peek through doorways. Sometimes Xelqua will interrupt with a question, since his education on humans isn’t perfect.
“Who’s the person in the white coat in these pictures of you with your friends?”
Or questions about the house itself.
The Watcher is looking at a set of photos lit through a window by a warm streelight, ones that mostly feature people Xelqua has – well, not met, but been in the same room as.
“He’s in a lot of the pictures in this house,” Xelqua continues. “Even ones Scar isn’t in.”
Grian swallows. It’s been a few months, but that’s only made the situation sadder. In the photo, Scar stands with arm around a man slightly shorter than him, with darker hair but the same vibrant green eyes.
“That’s Scar’s brother, Cub. He lived here, too, until he went missing. Just vanished while Scar was with us at work,” Grian explains, hesitating as he realizes something terrifying.
He sets a hand on Xelqua, who whips around and blinks all of his eyes. Even the markings.
“I… hope that whatever happened, it’s not related to the, the markings.” He takes a breath. “None of these pictures show markings, obviously, but sometimes…”
Xelqua makes a nervous noise, and his claws clench on Grian’s shoulder.
“I don’t like that! I don’t like any of that!” he says with plastic cheer.
“Yeah,” Grian agrees, looking at Cub’s faint smile beside Scar’s blinding grin. “I don’t know if I want to be wrong or not.”
He lingers a bit longer in the quiet with Xelqua, just looking at the photos. Most of these are from celebrations from the last three years. Nothing big like birthdays, but instead little things like movie premieres or breakthroughs in Cub’s inventions. Grian hums and turns to look through another doorway for the jeans sofa.
“Cub was an inventor. He made a lot of the funny little light fixtures and things around the house, and he ran Vexcorp along with Scar. He’s been missing for… almost four months.”
The room he glances into lacks both jeans sofa and seashells. The magical markings across the legs of the chairs and tables run counter to the weave of the wicker furniture.
“Not here yet, let’s keep going,” Grian says.
Xelqua makes a considering noise but doesn’t interrupt again until Grian finds the right room.
“…How are you sure?”
“The seashells on the shelves, and the pillow shapes, and this visual crime,” he says, waving at the jeans sofa. “We passed through it earlier, and we made jokes that it looks like Scar is the guy who keeps stealing Jimmy’s jackets to turn into upholstery.”
The denim fabric used does not have the glowing scales Jimmy’s jackets do. Maybe Grian will be able to track down the thief now.
Shuffling around to bump against Grian’s jaw, Xelqua hums doubtfully.
“Well, that’s fine and all, but… I can’t see that,” Xelqua says.
“What?”
“It’s dark. This room doesn’t have any open windows. How are you seeing right now?”
Grian goes very still. Xelqua wriggles around some more, but it feels far away.
How is Grian seeing right now?
He spins in place slowly, taking in the pale walls and ghostly shelving, the shadowy forms of other, non-jeans furniture. Now that he looks, Xelqua is right. No lamps sit at the center of the splotches of dim light. There are definitely sources, brightest spots, though overall the room remains dark enough that Grian didn’t notice. Some of the shells glow from within, the furniture in big stripes-
The markings.
The magically scarred sections of the room make light! Actual light only he can see.
“That’s terrifying.”
Xelqua squeaks around his neck, then twists around with a paw raised like he was trying to feel out his surroundings.
“What’s terrifying?”
Grian waves his hands again.
“It’s the, the lights, they’re - what I’m seeing, I think it’s the markings - the light is them,” Grian says quickly, beginning to pace. “I can see the markings, and they’re light, and that’s why. I’m, I’m seeing in the dark because I’m seeing the magic.”
Xelqua’s head wobbles as he scans the room, as if tipping his head will reveal anything.
“That’s... how much magic is in this room? I thought you only saw little pieces?”
Grian fumbles for his phone to activate the torch and then aims it at the jeans sofa. Xelqua’s anxious wriggling slows with the light.
“Here, is this better?” Grian asks before answering Xelqua. “I don’t know how to show you what the marks look like.”
Honestly, Grian should’ve thought about all of this earlier. He should’ve noticed that the rooms were lit, that they were lit by the marks, and that Xelqua couldn’t see. He hadn’t even noted that the Watcher was clinging to him instead of flying around like usual! He really is tired, and somehow broken the habit of being constantly on-guard.
With the gift of sight, Xelqua flutters down onto the jeans sofa. He nudges the fabric, then scratches at it in confusion. Is he trying to sense the magic still? For a long moment, Grian hovers in the middle of the living room and watches Xelqua tug at the jeans sofa and poke his nose into the pockets.
Then his brain manages to smash together a thought.
“Maybe I could trace some for you?”
Again, it is obvious in hindsight. Grian kneels on the couch, sideways so his body won’t be blocking Xelqua’s vision.
“There’s three colors here, mostly,” Grian begins. “Pink, orange, and blue. Scar has all three colors, but mostly blue across his scars, and pink makes the biggest blotches here. They’re lower, here, and then these-“ he rises on his knees and spreads his fingers the match the shape. “-in orange and blue are cut-like, and usually higher up.”
Humming in acknowledgement, Xelqua flips his head back and forth and starts glowing brightly. While his physical eyes close, the glowing ones open wide, and their pupils start flicking around. Grian almost makes a noise, but he doesn’t want to break Xelqua’s concentration.
A few minutes pass.
Xelqua opens his physical eyes, and the glowing fades. Then he shakes his head in a much more deliberate manner.
“I can’t sense anything weird here. Scar and Jellie noises are the loudest, and you since you’re here, and also Mumbo and your brother really quietly.”
…Why would attempting to listen to the Song make Xelqua’s eyes glow?
“I don’t like that,” is what actually comes out of Grian’s mouth. “Not even something that could be Cub?”
“I don’t think, um, the Song can go back that far? No echoes.”
“Huh.” Grian slides to his feet. “Maybe we could try to find Cub’s workroom after you eat and try the same thing there.”
Xelqua launches himself into the air. “Sure!”
- - - - -
One snack time later, both halves of Boatem’s newest Magical Girl wander through the dark house with Grian’s phone aloft. Grian is fumbling through his own memory attempting to locate Cub’s workroom. It was always easier when Cub was in it, making small noises as he put together things for VexCorp and for Scar. Grian is pretty sure it’s on the ground floor, with windows facing their yard, but Scar loves to redecorate. Trying to remember the way by how denim any particular couch is will not help here.
The markings are still present, too, which only adds credence to Grian’s new theory about what happened to Cub. Blue and orange ribbons, pink blotches, and the odd mixture on certain surfaces. Plenty of Cub’s small, finished creations are still present on shelves and tables. Nothing that Grian can see is damaged, but that probably would’ve been taken as evidence, or maybe Scar would’ve already cleaned it up.
Despite the late and/or early hour, exploring Scar’s house with Xelqua is oddly jolly. Most of the doors are locked, or blocked, or otherwise stuck, but Grian keeps trying anyway. Especially ones that have splashes along the bottom or blotches on the knobs. Xelqua flutters along behind him and sniffs the doors to try and divine what lies behind them, and occasionally describes a smell Grian finds worrying. What does ‘cucumbers and lasagna’ mean, and how does Xelqua know what lasagna smells like?
The next corner he turns reveals a striped hallway featuring a massive steel door.
Yes. That’s it. Cub’s workroom.
“That door! How are we going to get it open?” Grian points with his phone hand, and Xelqua scuttles out along his forearm.
“It doesn’t have a handle that I can see,” Xelqua notes.
Grian shifts his arm to point at the wall beside the door, or more specifically the control panel and the small red light indicating that it’s still locked.
“It’s locked from this side; need to hit the right buttons.”
Looping up Grian’s arm, Xelqua hums and flips his head around.
“We don’t need keys?”
Instead of having to carefully position his phone to keep allowing Xelqua to see, Grian turns on one of the stained-glass lamps on the hall table. His phone goes back in his pocket, and he rubs his newly freed hands. It’s not reminiscent of a cartoon villain at all.
“Each of these buttons is numbered, right? If we hit the buttons, they will put numbers here–“ Grian taps the small screen, no longer washed-out by the tiny red light. “-and then if they are the correct numbers, the light will turn green and the door will move downward.”
Cub had designed the system to be Scar-proof, which meant that it didn’t have a bunch of steps to open and would also not trap Scar in the room. There are four digits in the code from the size of the screen, and a number pad with each button a different color, though some are tainted by markings. Maybe the colors were chosen to help Scar remember? If it’s four digits, it’s probably not Cub’s lucky number of 135.
“So, it’s like a secret phrase?” Xelqua asks, having shuffled up to Grian’s shoulder.
“Yes! I think we’ll have to guess it, though,” Grian says. “Shouldn’t be too hard, Scar has to be able to remember it.”
He examines the panel again. Four slots on the screen, all numbers from 0-9, not anything new. What number would be easiest for Scar to remember? Crouching, Grian pokes at a low shelf, trying to rustle up a clue. There are plenty of framed photos and small inventions Grian could carefully lift and check for any dates, but instead his eyes fall on the prints stained into the wood and then up against the wall.
“Xelqua, I think… If the Rogue broke in to steal Cub, the marks on the panel are on the buttons we should use.”
Loudly gasping, Xelqua flails on Grian’s shoulder.
“Which ones? Can I-“
He falls silent as Grian points, first to the zero beside the enter key and then up to the one and two.
“Not four different numbers, unfortunately, and it’s definitely not Cub’s lucky number, but it’s more of a lead than we had!”
Xelqua nods excitedly and wiggles carefully as he thinks.
“So, what numbers do those make that would be likely… it could be a month - January or February, like 0-2-0-1? And maybe 2-0-1-0; it could be a year.”
“Scar and Cub’s birthdays are in summer, and Scar’s has a nine in it I’m pretty sure,” Grian adds, and only tries the first two suggestions.
Both times, the lock only beeps grumpily at them.
“I wish it’d tell us if we got some of the numbers in the right spot,” says Xelqua.
“Would defeat the purpose of a lock, probably,” says Grian, distracted. He’s thinking about numbers Scar would know. If not his and Cub’s birthdays, then it’s probably (hopefully) a year, and not 2010.
Wait.
Hold on.
“I think you were almost right, and if we combine your guesses,” Grian begins.
“Really?” Xelqua chirps, delighted.
Grian steps forward and hits-
“2011 was the year this house was built. Scar designed it,” Grian explains, and the lock clicks green.
The halves of Aria cheer as the door lowers.
While Xelqua immediately lunges into the air to zip into the revealed space, Grian freezes in place. He scans over the room and the sweet bubble of success pops and sinks.
If this house is splattered with magical markings, Cub’s workroom is painted with them. It isn’t the automatic lights. Every surface, the tables and counters, shelves and mechanisms, even the floor and ceiling, just swirling with pink, orange, and blue. And, and, they’re bright! Strong!
Either something spent a lot of time in here, or…
Well. Something very magical happened.
And Cub… was likely here at that time, huh?
“Grian?”
Oh, he’s just been standing here, freaking out.
“I- Xelqua, can you- It’s covered in markings. Glowing.”
There is a moment of silence. Freed from his dread, Grian squints into the workroom, trying to spot his friend. They might as well investigate a little normally before Xelqua does that magic thing he does. Whatever corner Xelqua has wriggled into is hidden from the doorway, however, so Grian grits his teeth and places one foot in the center of an orange blast-mark.
Nothing happens.
Grian takes another step, then another, and then does not startle when Xelqua flops out from behind a machine Grian cannot identify. Well. He doesn’t scream. He might flinch a little bit.
“You aren’t creeped out at all?”
Xelqua blinks.
“Nothing is moving, there’s just… buzzing?”
That’s fair. Grian isn’t sure what Vexcorp is focused on, but Cub’s workroom has many different machines and parts under the glow. There are boxes of scrap, screws, tools, and specialized parts, and many, many legs. Not flesh legs! Metallic ones, and Grian is surprised that Xelqua isn’t concerned by the number of armored legs hanging from the ceiling or carefully unfolded but collecting dust. Grian is a little concerned, and he knows exactly why Cub has so many mechanical legs in his workroom. Well. Grian is mostly concerned because the legs are just as covered in markings as the workshop and the person whom the legs are designed for.
Xelqua bounces over to the mechanical exoskeleton that Grian hesitantly reaches out to touch. With all the enthusiasm of an Earth ferret down a tunnel, Xelqua climbs into the empty casing and wriggles around to blink at Grian. It’s unfairly cute.
“Comfy in there? This one even has padding, I wonder if Scar ever wore it,” Grian muses.
That is what causes Xelqua to hum in confusion. “People making movies need armor? Well, I guess you did get attacked by spiders, and that Warden.”
Now, Grian is blinking rapidly in confusion and not because of how magically bright this room is. Right. Xelqua wouldn’t know…
“Well, it’s not just armor. Cub made these since Scar can’t walk by himself – they call it an exoskeleton, even though Scar already has bones,” Grian says.
Xelqua hums, flashing bright purple, and twists to look at Grian upside-down. He’s accidentally caught his nose under his tail, but since he clearly has something on his mind, Grian takes a breath. He doesn’t want to talk about Scar’s history without his permission, even though he’s talking to a secret magical creature!
“Why would having bones mean that he doesn’t have an exoskeleton? Isn’t that just outside bones?”
Well, never mind then. Grian is glad they are both confused in this conversation.
“On Earth, most things either have endoskeletons or exoskeletons. Some vertebrates do have external armor, but it’s often connected to their inside bones. Do creatures where you’re from have …both?”
“Yes! Well, sort of. There are these teleporting spirits and they definitely have exoskeletons and endoskeletons. They’re from the End, though, but they teleport to the World.”
Xelqua pulls himself up onto the outside of Scar’s exoskeleton as he speaks and wobbles up to wave his paws as he talks.
“They’re usually all black with purple eyes, and if you look at them, they get really mad, and they’re so big that I usually just hide. Not as big as the Warden though! Maybe I can…”
Scanning the workroom, Xelqua takes to the air. He dives toward an oddly neat desk and tugs one of the sketchbooks free. Grian tugs the chair out and balances the cup of pens as Xelqua pulls on one. He has to hold it like a toddler, with both hands (paws?), but is nonetheless determined to draw something.
“What are these spirits called? Or do they not have a name because they’re from the End?” Grian asks carefully. He’s very confused. There are even more dimensions beyond the Rift?
Pausing in his efforts, Xelqua shrugs, then continues drawing.
“We call them Endermen.”
“Hm,” Grian begins slowly. “So they have… ender-skeletons. Well. That’s all nice and ominous. Will we have to worry about them?”
Grian tries to imagine fighting a teleporting foe, and his headache doubles.
“Only if you look at them! See, they’re really tall and skinny,” Xelqua says, putting down his pen.
The drawing is a stick figure.
Honestly, it’s probably pretty special for a creature without thumbs, but whatever Xelqua is trying to convey is lost on Grian. It reminds him of drawings Jimmy made when they were little.
Playing along, Grian asks, “So they have black exoskeletons?”
“Yes! The only time I saw one up close, their arms were really cool. The joints have a bunch of plates that layer over each other – like that arm!”
Arm?
Scar doesn’t need an exoskeleton for his arm. What did Cub make?
Grian turns slowly, scanning the bright, swirling colors for the armlike shape Xelqua has spotted. There are boxes completely full of strange objects, a glass containment section with a dark blue claw (?) in it, a plant with a bright light emanating from the bloom, but nothing. What is Xelqua pointing at?
It’s when Grian is finally facing the door that he sees it. A metallic arm, hung to the left side of the door. Perfectly silver, but somehow delicate fur patterns are carved into every plate. As if in a trance, Grian takes a few slow steps toward it, and Xelqua jumps up to his shoulder to continue chattering innocently.
“The Endermen are really good at taking weird chunks out of the world! They carry them around and will put them in in strange places-“
Grian is not listening. Well, not consciously. The sounds are entering his head but aren’t getting any further. The arm is perfectly still, but Grian can imagine it moving and flexing up to unhook itself from the wall. Its fingers are clawed, and the magical lights reflecting off its silver fur give it the illusion of movement.
The lights, reflecting.
The arm is clean silver.
“That isn’t supposed to be here,” Grian interrupts.
“-really distinct smell, I can always tell when they’ve been nearby- What?”
Raising his own arm, Grian points at the mechanical one. Now that he’s noticed, he can’t pull his eyes away from the only other thing in the room not covered in magic.
“Everything – everything – in this room is glowing except for that. When the rest of the room was marked, that wasn’t there. It’s clean, blank. The hook might be green at the top, but otherwise? This is new.”
He can’t tear his eyes away from it anymore. He is fully expecting it to move if he walks up to it. He can’t believe it didn’t move when they opened the door.
Wobbling, Xelqua leans towards Grian’s ear and whispers, “Why would it be put up after Cub… was lost?”
“I don’t know. …The door was locked, even, but you were just talking about a Spirit that could teleport…”
Grian hears Xelqua sniff, and then he whispers again.
“It doesn’t smell like the End in here, but Cub was taken a while ago, right? It smells more like deep caves, at least to me.”
Grian has nothing to say to that. He manages to nod.
There is silence for a long moment, save for breath and the hum of electricity. How is Grian going to explain this to Scar? He probably should, right? This thing definitely wasn’t in this room, but would Scar even know that?
How would Grian even prove to Scar that it was strange? ‘Oh yeah, I can see glowy lights on everything in this room except this hand, where is it from?’ Scar isn’t that gullible. Grian would have to prove it some other way.
Xelqua takes a breath like he’s going to speak.
Somewhere across the house, a very loud crash rings out.
“What was that?” both man and Spirit yelp, and Xelqua digs into Grian’s shoulder.
Getting a face full of feathers, Grian tries to steady Xelqua and asks, “Should we check it out?”
Xelqua is breathing rapidly under Grian’s hands.
“…Maybe Aria should.”
“Oh, that’s a much safer idea.”
The transformation seems to sweep over Grian much more quickly than before. When the Song rushes in, its tempo is just as panicked as the Spirit’s breathing. Whatever made that noise is very dangerous. And someone went missing in this very house!
Aria’s wings are not very helpful in such a maze, but she tries to remember the paths Grian and Xelqua have taken. There were a lot of stripes, and little miniature buildings, and a couch made of denim. Unhelpful – she doesn’t know where the crash originated. She has to try something else. The markings? No, now that she is looking for them, she notices they are too faint – like stains in the air instead of on surfaces like what Grian can see. Strange, but not enough to override the emergency.
What can she do to find whatever is haunting Scar’s house quickly, before it causes more damage or even steals another person?
Is there anything nearby that can help? There are the markings, the rooms of varying themes, the beat of her heart and heels on various surfaces. At the edge of her hearing, there are footsteps and very muffled speech. Panicked, with a lot of rustling clothing, but no crying or screams. Grian’s friends! But they might not be near the Rogue either. She can’t tell who is who just by listening and looking to her left and right and into the room with what looks like blue smoke coalescing across the boards.
The only thing that gets any louder – or changes at all! – is the Song of Fate.
Left and looking into the room have loud, rapid patterns that fall off when she heads to the right. She’s very glad no one else is here to watch her test this, running back and forth in a dark hallway while trying not to hit anything with her skirt or wings.
Then she considers that if anyone was here, then she’d at least be able to protect them, and she scrunches her nose. She has a heading now! At least until it tapers off again. Bouncing off the wall at the T-junction, she whirls in place, then follows the beat down the right.
It’s a lot like playing hot-or-cold in Xelqua’s childhood memories, except instead of being blindfolded and listening to whoever was chosen as the eyes, it’s Aria chasing her own magic. She supposes that two people are still technically involved. Having human height does help with speed considerably.
Her wings are still very much in the picture, as proven by them nearly cracking the walls when another crash shakes the night.
That second crash heralds a scream, very familiar to half of Aria’s ears. Jimmy! The note he hits is pulled into the Song, and Aria chases it along. All of the sounds become louder and clearer, not just the alarm drumbeat. Seems to be the right way, then!
“-that thing!?” Oh, that’s Mumbo.
Oh, that’s Mumbo right there!
Aria flicks her wings out and skids to a stop. The resulting gale knocks over several small objects and thoroughly ruffles the people in the hallway. All three of Grian’s friends are frozen in poses of confusion and terror. Jimmy is the farthest from her, fists up like he was going to punch something despite his fish hat pulled low over his head. Scar, shirtless, is leaning against a doorway with a baseball bat, and then Mumbo is holding a chair like a shield with his eyes squinched shut. Given that the chair is about a fourth of his size, it wouldn’t do much.
Oh, right, Aria has startled everyone!
“I take it there was a Rogue here?” Aria asks, tucking her wings flat and standing up as straight as possible.
Jimmy nods shakily, and Scar says “Yes! It was blue!”
Mumbo shudders in relief and puts the chair down, then leans on it. It’s a little disconcerting, how immediately Grian’s friends relax at her presence. She’s new! …They don’t know that though. And, hopefully, if she manages to not be recognized, they won’t learn.
“None of you got hit?” she asks, stepping forward.
Three shaking heads.
“That’s good. Then please retreat and call this in. I will keep tracking it.” She loops around Jimmy and hopes the lighting isn’t bright enough that he can notice the Grian traits.
Her stomach drops as Jimmy grabs her arm.
“Wait, there’s still my brother, he’s still somewhere!”
“Yeah, his room is in that direction, too!” Scar adds.
She freezes, for barely a moment. Forcing her feathers to relax, she turns to look at them. This is bad. Not in the way they’re thinking of bad, but still bad! How is she going to keep them from looking for Grian?
Scar pushes away from the wall and walks between her and Jimmy, tapping her lightly.
“I can lead you to Grian’s room!” he swings the bat up to point further down the hall.
“Please don’t run into trouble,” she responds automatically, biting down on the tired ‘again, Scar’ that wants to slip out.
“Yeah!” Jimmy squeaks, whipping his arm out in front of Scar so suddenly they collide with a sound like a high-five. “Oh God, why are you still shirtless?”
Behind Aria, Mumbo makes a choked noise. Aria might have giggled, also.
Scar finishes windmilling his arms and folds them over his chest. “Can’t a man be shirtless in his own home? We have important business to attend to!”
“Put on a jumper, Scar!” Mumbo insists, then realizes, “Oh, I’m sorry miss, my name is Mumbo, this is Scar and Jimmy. We’re looking for Grian.”
“Mumbo, Scar, Jimmy, and Grian,” Aria repeats. She’s proud of herself for remembering to not say Timmy. Hm. How had Musician bowed when introducing herself? Aria isn’t confidant that she manages to pull it off - wings, balance, trying to hurry, you know how it is. “I am Aria, Bow of Fate.”
Scar wanders back through the door he had been leaning in, and Jimmy fumbles his phone out to call in this incident – which will be trouble if she doesn’t sort it out before the team gets here and doesn’t find Grian.
“Alright. You may follow me when the Rogue Response Team arrives,” Aria announces towards the doorway and Mumbo, and spins on her heel as Jimmy’s call connects.
He squawks again, but then hastily begins explaining to the person on the other end of the line that a Rogue is in the house. Aria follows the Song of Fate down the corridor, which continues to increase in speed. She hears Jimmy ask what the address is before the Song soars as she takes a left.
The sounds start to resemble rustling, and Aria thinks she can actually hear it with her real ears. She certainly can feel it vibrating along her spine. The Rogue isn’t moving quickly and is instead poking around in the nearby twisted branch of the house.
Perfect. She can just trap it in a room with her so it can’t get at Grian’s friends while they look for him.
The Rogue has left a trail of disturbed knickknacks that Aria could follow even if she couldn’t hear it rattling. Each of the little houses and cars have landed in slate blue marks with tattered edges, like some giant ghost has left steaming wet pawprints while kicking over Scar and Cub’s stuff.
When she finally slowly opens the door with the noisy intruder, she revises her statement: the marks left are probably made by wings smacking into things like a tossed chicken. Also that the Song is bad at indicating how many particular targets there might be; there are creatures, at least three but probably more, all over the room. They are about the size of chickens, so the earlier comparison stands, and all blue and grey wings and white bone armor. They don’t look very intimidating.
Hm. Xelqua is smaller than them and he’s strong enough to power an entire Magical Girl. And with how much color was all over the workroom, these Rogues can probably do something big.
Luckily, they’re all distracted by bottles in a cupboard. It’s the first time she hasn’t had to rush into a battle! She can actually analyze the situation first!
Carefully, she eases the door shut without engaging the latch. It’s unclear where one of the Rogues end and the other begins, but what she can see correlates to the phantoms in Xelqua’s memory. Flying predators that attack at night, and only the most exhausted and vulnerable prey …like an inventor pulling an all-nighter. Usually – usually – phantoms have ghostly magic that lets them slide into solid objects to hide during the day, but that doesn’t explain what happened to Cub.
Aria crouches, wings flaring a little as she tries to balance. She has to be fast and quiet to take the group by surprise. The problem, then, is that she doesn’t have a weapon. The Warden and the spiders were all big, loud targets that were in an open enough space that her Song could be deployed. This is Scar and Cub’s house, and Aria doesn’t want to destroy it with her magical blasts. What else does she have?
Big boots, but her wings affect her balance enough that she probably can’t pull off a perfect kick of Grian’s skill. Similarly, the large, chunky claws attached to her hands are good for forming the curves of her magic eyes, but not great for tucking down into fists.
Oh wait, she’s ridiculous. She has giant bird talons.
She isn’t sure why she has giant bird talons as Xelqua’s claws are proportionate for a Watcher and/or a ferret, but as they’re here and attached so she certainly won’t have to worry about losing her grip on a weapon.
Before she can worry about losing her grip on a phantom, she has to catch one. The group of phantoms are loud, certainly, and none have turned around just yet - they’re bowling over the bottles and crafting supplies in the cupboard. Her steps are very carefully timed to the sounds from the cabinet, like a game of Red Light, Green Light – only move when the phantoms are noisy.
Of course, the phantoms have been tossing around the contents of the cupboard for more than the two minutes she’s been creeping up behind them. Apparently, one has now decided that it’s done with its random chaos and whirls around not a foot from Aria’s extended talons.
Three shrieks: Aria’s battle cry, the phantom’s rattling alarm, and the Song going high-pitched and sharp. The phantom before her ripples pure white. Purple sparks flutter through the air as Aria leaps forward, but the phantom has just enough time to jump into the air and summon its compatriots. She lunges again and clacks her talons against each other. Not intentionally! The phantom, still misty white, slides right through her fingers like a cloud. Crafty!
“Hey! That’s rude!” she calls as the Rogue continues to drift left and whirl in the air.
Uncaring, the phantom waggles its jaw and flaps a loose circle. The others – two more heads, but more might be blocked still – poke out of the cupboard and shriek. She’ll ignore them unless they take off. For now, she wriggles her talons again and turns to face the flying Rogue cautiously. She can’t hear anything new in the Song, it’s just repeating the rapid clattering from the surprise. Hopefully it will warn her if the cupboard phantoms try to jump her while she catches their friend.
In the air, the pale phantom circles. It isn’t staying at a single altitude and ducks down right before it would fly over her head before shooting back up, like it keeps chickening out of following through on an attack. Aria rocks on her feet carefully and flexes her talons.
On the next sweep, she beats her wings once and leaps up to catch the little Rouge. It squawks, twisting around until she squeezes. Abruptly, the press of scales beneath her fingers pops into crystal and the rest of the phantom fades, from silver to blue and then to dust.
Aria then has to duck as the remaining phantoms shriek their own war cries. She warbles out her own notes to add to the noise and the number of flying objects in the room – summoned eyes bob in the air from the curve of her wings. She wishes she could select specific eyes to see through instead of all of them at once; it’s far too disorientating as the phantoms continue to scream and loop about, nipping at her wings and jumping away before she can hit them. They back off when she whips the eyes around her, but the movement takes too much breath to keep up for very long.
All the same, the pause is long enough for Aria to get her back to the door and get a better view of the remaining phantoms. There are three of them, and when they notice Aria is looking, they turn white. The shrieking doesn’t let up.
“Which one of you is next?” Aria asks, patting her dress to find the pockets again.
The phantoms writhe around each other in the air and then seem to come to a consensus. They all turn to her, scream, and charge.
“Of course.”
Aria regrets wasting her breath – the eyes she has summoned raise and a few pop as the phantoms run into them. The Song makes a twinkling glass noise, and the shards hover with Aria’s hiss before digging into the frontmost phantom. The other two impact with her wings and bite. Flailing, she slams into the door and one of the mouths releases. There are two more shrieks, then two soft pops, and a voice going “Woah!” muffled through the door.
Before Aria can deal with whoever snuck after her, her attention is caught by something glowing on the floor. Another core! That first phantom must have been unable to deal with the shards of eye. She pockets it as another yelp comes through the door.
Something explodes.
Aria scrambles up and catches her claws on the door handle as someone yells outside. The door frames the revealed chaos perfectly.
Jumping on one foot, Miss Hawkeye is swatting the two remaining phantoms with her bow. At least it’s not one of Grian’s friends? There are soot marks on the ceiling. One of the phantoms is looping around the other Magical Girl with earsplitting shrieks while the other hovers to the left, pale like it’s preparing magic.
None of them have noticed her.
If only the phantom wasn’t so high up, she could snatch it without any movement that might catch its eye…
She jumps anyway, wings stretching along the hallway. Her claws flex, the phantom’s tail flicks, but no, the swirl of air shoves it up and whooshes through the room. Very distractingly.
Miss Hawkeye yells almost as loudly as the phantoms, but Aria ignores the words because the Rogues are skittering away.
“C’mon!” She yells, and races down the lefthand hallway.
Both phantoms flicker between blue and white. They whistle and rattle to each other as Aria chases and Miss Hawkeye scrambles to follow.
“When did you get here?” Miss Hawkeye demands.
Oh, no, what should she say? Well, technically, she did just-
“I followed the sound of the phantoms!”
Miss Hawkeye ooohs. Excellent, that was vague enough. The phantoms turn pale and take a sharp turn to the right, through a door.
Not a doorway, a door.
Right through it. It’s closed. Aria pulls up short with a flap of her wings and fails to stop fast enough to not slide by it, which turns out to be fine as Miss Hawkeye doesn’t stop immediately either. In fact, she only stops when she notices that Aria has.
“Hey, they can’t have gone far-“
“Shh!” Aria hisses, leaning against the door. The phantoms are chirping less aggressively, almost whispering like children playing hide-and-seek.
Miss Hawkeye startles. “Oh, wait, are you listening for them? Okay, I’ll be quiet.”
Somehow, Aria doubts that. Miss Hawkeye’s heartbeat is plenty loud on its own, not to mention the vague buzzing that follows her around. Maybe a specialized arrow? No, focus, how far are the phantoms from the door?
Soft squawking. The light squeak of Aria’s talons against painted blue wood. A muffled thump, louder rattling. The leathery flap of wings, definitely headed away from her as the clacking instrumentation in the Song fades.
Aria leans back and whispers, “They’re moving away from the door, but they aren’t running – speed-flying? – anymore.”
Miss Hawkeye is leaning towards her, and lowers the hands that were pressed against her mouth and grins.
“They think they juked us!”
“There’s just the two left, right? One for each of us. How about you take the one on the left and I’ll take the one on the right?”
That’s so many lefts and rights for one set of instructions. If this was Grian talking to Scar, he’d have to actually indicate which way was which.
Miss Hawkeye simply nods. “If they’re stacked, I’ll take the one on top!”
Aria nods but narrows her eyes. That has the cadence of a short joke.
Even if she didn’t intend that, Miss Hawkeye certainly means to step up right next to Aria and almost lean over her to twist the doorknob. Aria hisses and bats at Miss Hawkeye’s ponytail.
“What?” Miss Hawkeye asks, freezing.
Aria slips out from under her arm. Tall people have no concept of personal space if nothing is in their face.
“Let me summon some eyes first! You already have your projectiles.”
“Eyes?”
Shaking out her wings, Aria hums as quietly as she can. The Song rises in the air in her ears and then on her voice, and Miss Hawkeye makes another confused noise.
“The orbs? Why do you call them eyes?”
Miss Hawkeye startles a little when Aria looks up at her. Hmm.
“They peel off of my eyespots?”
Both Magical Girls scrunch their noses at that phrasing, but Aria doesn’t take it back. She spins the eye in her claws and lifts it to Miss Hawkeye’s level.
“They also have pupils.”
Miss Hawkeye leans away and lets go of the handle.
“No?”
Aria spins the one in her hands. Yes, it does. Just like the others floating around her.
“Well, okay, they are kind of translucent instead of being perfectly clear, but there is a darker side. See?” She taps the false lens, making a nice chime, but Miss Hawkeye is not convinced.
“Uh… No?”
Huffing, Aria stares at her. Oh, wait-
“Maybe only I can see them? Or –“ Aria points at the light blue patches on the door from where the Phantoms slid through it. “Can you see these?”
Miss Hawkeye eyes the door like it’s going to split open and attempt to bite her.
“No, again,” she says. “What are you seeing?”
Aria hums, the eyes swirling.
“The eyes are eyes. They each have darker spots like pupils. The door – a lot of things in this hallway, in this house – glow like there’s a blacklight on fluorescent paint.”
She doesn’t think she should bring up that only one of her components can see the stains normally. That feels a bit too much like saying she fused in this house, and she’s already going to have one heck of a time unfusing safely.
“Can you really not see any magical marks?” she asks, just to make sure.
Instead of ‘no’ for the fourth time tonight, Miss Hawkeye simply shakes her head. Aria wishes her magical sight could let her see what kind of expression the other Magical Girl is making under her visor. Her mouth is carefully neutral.
“Guess you have some kind of super-senses all around, huh?” she says eventually, less chipper than she’s been all night.
“Uh, yeah!” Aria says nervously. “I’ll tell you if I start, I don’t know, feeling the ghosts of magic or something.”
Bingo! Miss Hawkeye laughs again. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know, it hasn’t happened yet!”
Aria aims her best smile up at the other Magical Girl, then sweeps her wings to her right so they gesture towards the door.
“Shall we?”
“Let’s shall!”
The leather – or magical, leather-adjacent material – of Miss Hawkeye’s gloves doesn’t squeak as she turns the handle again. Aria flexes her talons. The revealed room is a library, bigger than Aria expected, with squishy couches and bright, swirling steam in pink, orange, and two shades of blue.
One of the phantoms is coiled around the topmost rung of one of those sliding ladders attached to bookcase on the left wall. It’s watching the other eat paper on a desk in the middle of the room.
Miss Hawkeye draws her bow, arrow magically stringing itself as she pulls it back. Aria hits a note that sends the eyes hurtling through the air. The phantoms squeal and launch into the air. Similarly to when they’d rushed Aria, the eyes are in the perfect spot for Aria’s target to just run into them, and several pop.
The rest are blown away as the arrow loosed by Miss Hawkeye explodes. Wait, no, turns into a tornado; the eyes and the battered phantom are drawn back across the room. The miniature storm tugs at Aria’s hair, skirts, and feathers, but it can’t stop her from detonating the final eyes as the phantoms are entangled in the wind. Instead of the normal twinkling chimes and flashes, the Song almost snarls with the sound of many shards of magical glass and rattling phantoms as the storm whirls.
Should they be worried about two kinds of magic mixing together like this? Aria glances at Miss Hawkeye. Again, the visor renders the Magical Girl’s face unreadable; that means worrying is silly, right?
The light show ramps up as the phantoms are reduced to cores and Aria takes a hesitant step forward. Apparently, the resistance supplied by their wings kept the tornado from reaching its maximum speed. Whining like a stressed gear, all the background beat drops out of the Song. The shards of eye turn into purple dust, then wink out as their magic fades. The storm fades, too.
Two cores drop to the carpet, noiselessly.
There is complete silence.
Nothing.
Until-
Miss Hawkeye takes a step, then casually walks around the low tables and seating to scoop up the two cores. Every footfall vibrates in the air, in Aria’s bones like it’s trying to restart her heart. It certainly restarts the Song, thumping along gently after all that jagged action. Aria presses her hands against her chest, not entirely convinced she’s fine.
What was that? The Song just… cut out! There was nothing! Until Miss Hawkeye moved, Aria couldn’t even hear her own heartbeat! It’s fluttering under her fingertips now, which is good, but why did it even flicker? What did mixing their magic do?
“Cutiepie? Aria? Hey? Are you… Okay?”
Miss Hawkeye is in front of her, ponytail swinging and knees bent. Why is she crouched? She isn’t that tall – oh. Aria sat down. Hmm.
“Is magic supposed to do that?” Aria tries, shakily.
Miss Hawkeye glances over at where the tornado was, then back at Aria.
“…Explode?”
Aria wiggles her hand.
“Make everything silent when it did.”
The pause as Miss Hawkeye flicks her attention back and forth between Aria and the now-empty floor feels much longer than it probably is, but as it can only be described as a lack of speech and not sound, Aria attempts to match her breathing to the beat of the Song.
Finally, Miss Hawkeye asks, “Do you know what magic overuse is?”
“No?”
The wry twist in the other Magical Girl’s mouth indicates that she expected this. She sticks her tongue thoughtfully out and presses her hands together.
“So, because there isn’t enough ambient magic or something, all the magic we use is generated by our Spirit, okay?” Miss Hawkeye begins, and folds her legs so she can sit comfortably. She waits until Aria nods to continue. “But Spirits usually only have to power their cores, and we’re not all cores, we’ve got-“ She pinches her own arm. “-Meat. Human stuff, too. Which is harder to …send the magic through. Not as …oh! Conductive. Cores conduct magic but flesh is bad at it, so we can run low if we use too much, and we get sick.”
That… does make sense. If she is low on magic, then she was simply unable to sense The Song of Fate. It didn’t stutter. It’s just that Grian didn’t sleep! Xelqua is putting in too much energy!
She raises a hand to scrub at her face and bumps into a solid force just above her skin. A mask? Hmm. That’s… good? Interesting that she didn’t notice its weight. Wait, no, she can think about that later, Miss Hawkeye is still talking!
“-the reasons a bunch of Magical Girls will show up to things, because then we can all share the effort and then it’s less noticeable for our pieces. Human and Spirit bits. Components. I am also tired!” She chirps brightly.
“We should wrap up then. You have the other cores?” Aria asks, trying to pull her last dregs of energy to the surface along with the cores she collected from her pockets.
“Yes! You better go to bed as soon as you unfuse, okay?”
“Sure,” says Aria, surrendering the cores with the expectation that the team Jimmy called will be keeping at least half of her up for a while longer.
- - - - -
Twenty minutes later, after awkwardly hiding in a random room to unfuse, Grian upholds that opinion. He sits in the plushest armchair in the sitting room the response team has decided to use as a base. He is, despite his and Miss Hawkeye’s wishes, awake. Xelqua may or may not be awake, if being scarf-shaped counts as being conscious. Grian doesn’t think so.
He is pleased, though – apparently Jimmy and Scar managed to smack the phantoms when they’d tumbled through the hallways and Mumbo had thrown things, so none of them are hurt! Though that might be because they were together, and the Phantoms couldn’t gang up on them individually.
“Hey,” Grian says, the first time his spoken since he was cleared, again. “Buddy system. Let’s not go anywhere by ourselves for tonight.”
He might regret that. But he’s also apparently too tired to be Aria properly, so he might as well have backup.
Jimmy, standing with hands on hips across the room, makes a thoughtful noise. Several members of the response team look up and make various agreeing noises, but the vague blur of their auras don’t waver as they don’t turn around. Scar, rolling around on the floor with Jellie, makes cooing noises at her. Apparently, everyone else is too tired for words.
It’s quiet for a while until the rest of the response team regroups. Scar gets up – after being gently kicked by Mumbo – to talk to the people confirming the security of his house. Grian closes his eyes and strains his ears.
“-else, Mr. Goodtimes, but neither can we find a point of egress. No broken or open windows or doors, no gaps in walls,” says a tired man, the red-haired one who had escorted Grian back to this room.
Scar makes his ‘nodding violently’ noise.
“No, no, that’s fine, that makes sense. The ones that came by us could go through things like ghosts! I think they just wanted to come inside, and the walls couldn’t stop them. Maybe the Magical Girls chased them out?”
Grian can’t help scrunching his face. How did Miss Hawkeye get in?
“That was mentioned in your reports, yes,” says another team member. “but neither the Rogues nor the Magical Girls have been identified.”
“Oh, those phantom-y guys are new?” Scar asks, voice pitched up like he’s trying to suppress a comment.
Grian opens his eyes just a little, enough to find Scar’s (still bare) back from behind his eyelashes. The bright lines of his scars catch the eye easily. Jellie is hooked over her owner’s shoulder, and is herself squinting at the room in turn. Jimmy leans into the conversation.
“The Magical Girl that ran through right before I called you guys was the same one from earlier, with the spiders? She had pink and gold wings.”
“With the spiders?” says the first member of the response team.
“Yeah!” Grian and company chirp.
“This is your second Rogue alert of the day?” says the other member, higher in pitch than before.
“I wasn’t there!” Jimmy protests, offended at the idea that he could be so careless as to get into two incidents in one day.
“Yeah, we got to ride the dragons!” Scar says cheerfully. Normally. Whatever he was trying to keep from escaping his teeth has fled him.
“I was on magic sickness watch!” Jimmy continues. Mumbo pats him without getting up from his chair.
“Are we going to have to call Pearl after all?” Grian asks, and Jimmy looks horrified.
“She’s going to kill me, I just know it,” he says, and the group starts laughing. It’s too early for this.
Yet again, the response team insists on making sure they all know the recommendations for magic sickness and the red-haired man even asks if they have someone else to watch over them.
Jimmy looks at Grian with a miserable expression.
Grian rolls his eyes, but pats his pockets until he finds his phone.
“It’s at only 2% charge,” Grian lies. Jimmy visibly wilts. Turning to Scar, Grian pulls up his whiniest, most annoying voice. “Scaaaaar, take me back to my room to get my chaaaaarger.”
Scar and Mumbo make disbelieving noises but Scar does stretch and wander over to the door behind the couch. One of the response workers twitches, aura flickering brightly for a moment, but doesn’t protest. Great! Grian flashes the room the most brilliant smile he can manage under the circumstances and resettles Xelqua on his shoulders. Time to tell Scar about the Phantom theory!
…How is he going to do that?
Well, first he has to figure out why he should know this. He’d lied earlier that one of the Magical Girls hid him, so maybe… no. He should figure out what Scar knows first. He’s tired and rusty. He pats Xelqua and takes a deep breath.
“Have any Rogues shown up before?”
Scar twitches uncertainly as he pats at the wall for a light switch. He rocks back and forth in place for a second as he opens and closes his mouth.
“Not recently, no, but there were Magical Girls who came by once. Aqua Vex and Fire Vex. That was a long time ago.”
“What? Really?”
How has Scar never mentioned this before? They’re investigating Magical Girls!
“Yeah.”
Grian stops waving his hands and squints at the back of Scar’s head.
“You don’t sound happy about that?”
Scar leans forward, further hiding his face.
“I’m thinking something followed… them… here. For Cub,” he says, which astonishingly gets them back on the target subject!
“Was that visit close to when Cub, uh, was last here?”
Scar turns left with shoulders hunched. Jellie weaves between the humans’ legs to chirrup comfortingly. Pausing only to pick her up, Scar ducks through another door without looking back.
“’Bout a week before, I believe,” he says.
Grian reaches out, but doesn’t catch Scar’s arm. Instead, he returns his hands to Xelqua and takes a deep breath. He has to be so careful, here.
“Did they leave any magical markers? Like, I don’t know, runes or something?”
Scar hesitates. Grian wishes he could see Scar’s face. Maybe his aura could help Grian somewhat, if only Grian knew what to look for.
“Are you asking if the Magical Girls tagged my house?”
“No, on the inside! The colors in your house!”
“The colors?” Scar yelps, fully shaken from his melancholy to whirl around and make Jellie squeak.
He wiggles in place like he’s trying to get an arm free, so Grian reaches out to finally touch him. It doesn’t make Scar any less nervous, but Jellie sniffs his wrist. That’s nice.
“There’s stripes and … splatters? Like paint? You can’t see it?” Grian asks and hopes the answer is ‘no’.
Scar goes rigid, aura flaring bright. He stares at Grian with wide, horrified eyes and Grian bites his lip. Did he push too hard? Jellie writhes around and Grian steps forward to keep her from flailing out of Scar’s arms or nicking him with claws.
“I’m going to take that as a no,” Grian says, trying to smooth over whatever has pressed the power button in Scar’s brain. “But I noticed them recently, and then tonight the Phantoms showed up, so now I’m wondering if that’s related. If they made something that lures in Spirits, but they keep getting Rogues?”
He doesn’t want to stop talking. Scar hasn’t moved except to track Grian’s fluttering, eyes still wide. Jellie has yet to stop wriggling, but she hasn’t fallen yet.
“-Or you keep getting Rogues, I suppose. I haven’t seen video of the Vex Sisters in… a while. Were they supposed to come back?”
Scar flinches and turns his face away. His eyes are closed! Grian is only making this worse. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. Jellie manages to push herself up over Scar’s arm so she can look at Grian head-on. Her attention itches just as much as Scar’s pain.
“Scar? Are you okay?”
Nothing. Not even a breath.
Well, no movement.
The magical markings on Scar’s body, however, are writhing.
They ripple and lift from his skin like they’re being shaken by repeated earthquakes, blades of light rising from his skin and cutting through his aura.
“You’re not okay,” Grian announces. “You’re flickering!”
Scar whips his head around and opens his eyes. They’re just as brightly flashing as the scars.
“You can see his magic?” yelps a voice, but Scar’s mouth doesn’t move.
Grian yells. Scar yells. Two more voices yell, and only one of them is familiar! Xelqua has un-scarf’d and scrabbles at Grian’s shoulders as Grian and Scar look down at-
Jellie?
“Why?” Scar hisses.
“What?” Grian yelps again.
Why is Xelqua moving? Who was that? What is happening!? Grian stumbles back, trying to shove Xelqua back over his shoulder, but the Spirit’s noodle-y body wriggles through his hands. Grian yelps for the third time and lunges forward to try and catch him but only succeeds in bumping into Scar and Jellie.
Jellie reaches out and catches Xelqua.
With hands.
Abruptly, the cat Scar was holding is instead a small, humanoid creature, dripping with soft pink magic. Xelqua is wiggling, but he isn’t scared – he’s chirping “hello, hello, hello!”
Grian waves his hands around. He was too tired for this hours ago. Scar hoists Jellie and Xelqua up to better examine the Watcher.
The new voice – Jellie’s voice – pipes up.
“Who are you, little guy?”
Xelqua squeals, delighted.
“I’m Xelqua! I’m a Watcher! Who are you?”
Scar’s head rises from his apparently-not-a-cat to stare at Grian. It’s Grian’s turn to freeze uncomfortably.
“I am Queen Jellie,” she says, and wriggles like she is attempting to bow or something. “Eldest of the Royal Cat line.”
Slowly, hesitantly, the shock in Scar’s eyes softens into something gentle Grian doesn’t understand.
“Oh! I’m sorry, um, Your Majesty?” Xelqua stutters.
Just as slowly, Scar starts to smile. Smirk. Offer his best evil grin. It stretches the stripes of magic across his cheeks. The ones that match the Spirit in his arms.
“Oh, you can just call me Jellie! I’m undercover, you know.”
Grian points at Scar. Scar opens his mouth.
“You’re a Magical Girl!?!?!?” they both say at the same time.
Scar is delighted! Grian is…
Grian is full of so many emotions. How had Scar managed to lie for… the entirety of their friendship? Jellie is sapient! Scar is magical! Scar decided to suggest the Magical Girl research project!
Scar is a Magical Girl and there was something very magical in Cub’s workroom.
“Which Magical Girl are you? When did you become a Magical Girl? Wait – You said you saw colors, like, Wait- Xelqua, you said you were a Watcher, wasn’t that what- WAIT!” Scar babbles, wobbling in place and shifting Jellie in place of gesturing.
Grian reaches up and plucks Xelqua into his arms to ward off the impending anxiety. He straightens up and tries to look less baffled than he is.
“We’re Aria.”
Scar squeals in delight and Jellie makes a loud ‘mm!’ noise with huge eyes.
“I was right!” Scar cheers, and the same time Jellie says –
“Oh, we’ve met you already!”
“Well, yes, I wasn’t just going to let you and Mumbo get attacked by spiders, even with the Wizard helping,” Grian says, because Xelqua hasn’t stopped making a small, excited ‘eeeee’.
Jellie shakes her head. “I mean we, as one person, have met you before,” she says with a smug little expression.
Scar spins her up and she rolls to stand on his shoulders, very like a toddler dressed up as a princess, and they both pose as they speak.
“We’re Hawkeye!”
Grian makes a choked noise as he tries to start multiple sentences at once. Xelqua’s ‘eeeee’ becomes an ‘EEEEE’.
Scar and Jellie start giggling.
“You’ve been her the whole time?” Grian eventually yells. His friends only laugh harder. “I’ve been freaking out about trying not to give myself away, and you’ve been a Magical Girl, one I have spoken to before, this whole time?”
“In my defense, I am undercover,” Jellie says.
Scar giggles, then shakes himself.
“Actually I’m usually partnered with… well… with Cub,” he says. “The other colors you saw are probably the other two Spirits who are missing.”
“Oh!” Xelqua breaks out of his excitement and droops over Grian’s shoulder.
For his part, Grian’s hand come up to cover his mouth.
“My retainers,” Jellie adds. “Katy Bee and Mr. Finnegan. They’re little, not great at staying in one shape yet.”
“Children?” Grian asks, through yet another wave of horror. “Something happened to children?”
Anger, no, rage is an unfamiliar expression on Scar’s face. His tilts his head up to death glare at the lighting inset in the ceiling as his aura sparks and the scar-marks flutter again.
“Something did,” he says, voice remarkably steady for the context. “and when we find out who… hm. Will you help?”
“Yes!” yells Xelqua while Grian says “Absolutely!” and leans forward to take Scar’s hands. “We can try to look into things during our research for the documentary-“
Scar slumps forward with a yelp from Jellie.
“Thank you,” he says. Grian pats him, and Jellie and Xelqua both bump their heads against him.
After a second, Scar takes a deep breath and straightens back up. Jellie continues to hide her face in his hair, but her partner has apparently tucked away his emotions. Grian is horrified and impressed – he hadn’t realized other people could do that so well.
Scar smiles. Grian mirrors him tentatively.
“How about you tell me about how you two met?” Scar says cheerfully. “I seem to remember we have to track down your charger, too.”
“You were there, it was literally two days ago,” Grian says.
“After the lot of you went into the Rift room, Grian was thrown through the window and I caught him,” Xelqua says.
“You are the little guy from the Observatory’s zoo!” Jellie says, delighted.
The halves of Miss Hawkeye somehow manage to talk Grian and Xelqua into rehashing the (brief) history of their partnership. It’s nice to be able to tell someone about all of this, even though Scar and Jellie were there for the most part. It still feels unreal to wander through the house and talk to the Spirits. Grian hopes he isn’t dreaming.
He thinks he’d like to have a proper team again for all these shenanigans. This is nice. Even better, he isn’t dragging someone else into something dangerous on accident. Scar and Jellie were already tangled up in the Magical Girl side of the city, and Xelqua was locked up! They’re going to find Cub! Grian hasn’t had a goal like this since… well, since he moved to Boatem. It settles something in him to have a long-term mission again.
Or maybe that’s his body throwing in the towel, because otherwise he’d have remembered to mention the silver arm.
Idealist/Cold-Blooded Killer: Paralysis/Restricted Movement from the whump generator for the prompts event!
This was so much fun to do, you know me so well Noble. Story below the cut
Music faintly plays throughout the house, an upbeat and jazzy number with lots of high notes that could make the dead dance. Thankfully, Wyatt is not dead but dances around xir kitchen anyway. Xir feet are sure, hands steady with the thin soup xe is cooking, voice rising to meet the dulcet feminine singing coming from xir phone. Xe spins around and lifts a hot spoon to xir lips to sip the yellow broth -- it tastes like gentle spice and soft root vegetables. A snapshot of home inside the pot.
The song changes as xe carefully ladles the steaming soup into two bowls, one of which is considerably smaller as if for a child. It even has a bright multi-colored smiling flower at the bottom with the face almost swimming towards the surface. Wyatt smiles back at the image and pauses xir music before picking up two spoons and the bowls. A dozen windchimes sound off from a breeze through the cracked living room window down the hall, unfortunately, muffled by walls and walls. Without the background noise, the rest of the house is too quiet.
Xe never likes the quiet.
But that’s okay! Xe will have new sounds soon. Having thought ahead, xe left the basement door open and slips inside the dark area, then closes the door with xir foot. The soup doesn’t even splash onto xir fingers as xe walks down the stairs, making sure to hit every old part that creaks and groans under xir weight. It’s like a little game every time. How loud can xe make it scream?
The basement is quiet as xe enters. The windows are covered with thin slats and then layered with foam and garbage bags in some makeshift soundproofing, xir workshop can get very loud with all the tools. However, it creates a snow-like feeling, as if xe was trapped under an avalanche, everything is muffled and soft and too empty. While the upstairs is walls and walls and doors and doors, xir basement is just one room with support pillars pushing up from the concrete floor at regular intervals. Bare bulbed lights flash on when xe uses xir shoulder to flip the switch at the bottom of the stairs.
And there he is. In the middle of the basement, away from any walls, is a lone wooden chair passed down in Wyatt’s family for generations, handmade by xir great-great-great-grandfather. A simple work of sturdy art and perfect to hold someone in place. Xe hums as xe approaches to let the blindfolded man know that xe is coming closer.
His head jerks at every sound so that his hair -- blonde, shaggy, unkempt, and brushing his ears -- swishes around his face and hits the dish towel that xe used as a makeshift blindfold. Xe watches him try, once again, to jerk his hands up against the rope binding him to the chair by all of his joints in his limbs. With this man, xe can never be too careful. The stitches in xir side remind xir of that every time xe moves.
“Good morning!” Xe says even if it is not morning at all, drifting into the soft evening hours that xe loves and hates. “How did you sleep?”
He cannot answer, of course, gagged with drool dripping from the cloth and onto his chin. It’s a mess but a necessary one.
Instead, he tries lunging forward and grunts like a wild animal.
“And I thought you wanted food,” xe tsks, setting down the bowls on a table a few feet away. “Should I just take this back upstairs? I know you’ve missed a few meals already because of bad behavior.” Wyatt gives a long and pained sigh.
His shoulders tense but he does stop moving, which is a good sign. His wrists are ruby red and xe would love to treat them -- had tried before but it doesn’t end well for either of them.
“If you keep doing that, you’ll kill yourself,” xe says as xe walks closer to inspect them. “We wouldn’t want you to die before you’re reformed.” That would truly be a tragedy, xe has put so much work already into fixing him. And has been making beautiful strides. One day, xe will be able to let his hands go, and then his ankles. Maybe xe will be able to let him walk around! Oh what a day that will be.
A low grumble shakes xir out of xir daydreaming. His stomach, of course. The poor thing hasn’t eaten in days because of his misbehavior, but so far today is a good day.
Xe stands back up and reaches for the sopping makeshift gag. “I’m going to take this off,” xe says. “You will not bite me. You will not yell. No one can hear you, as you know. If you’re good, I will give you food. Nod if you understand.”
He gives one, slow, agonizing nod.
“Good boy,” xe praises and pulls the cloth down his neck, letting it rest on his shoulders.
He gasps and coughs, his lips as bright a red as his wrists, his head dropping towards his chest with the force of his breathing.
“Head up.” Xe grabs the bowl with the smiling flower and dips a spoon into the steaming soup. “Open your mouth.”
He doesn’t move.
Xe’s normally smiling face twists into a sour look. “I said head up. And open. Your mouth,” xe grits out.
As if taking monumental effort, he lifts his head up and drops his mouth open. Xe is almost pleased by this; the wait he gave was an insult. So xe waits almost a minute before bringing the hot spoon to his lips, lips that immediately surge forward for the first taste of food in days. He gasps and pulls back with a yelp. The soup was too hot of course and burned his tongue.
“You don’t want this?” xe asks as xir voice drops into jagged disappointment. “I thought that you would be grateful, I’m letting you eat.” The spoon slips from xir fingers and lands into the bowl, splashing up against xir fingers and onto his bare legs and feet.
“It’s too hot,” he croaks. Oh, xe forgot how beautiful his voice is even if it hasn’t been used in so long. “It hurts.”
Wyatt grabs his jaw harshly and tugs him forward. His beard is prickly and scratches xir hand, his limbs pushing into rough rope. “I know.” Xe smiles widely, even if he cannot see he can hear the glee in xir voice. “That’s why you’re going to eat it. Because you are going to feel ten times the pain you caused when you killed those people.” With a push on his jaw, xe stands back up and knocks his head against the chair.
He flinches his shoulders up in an attempt to grab his head.
“Open up again,” xe says and takes the spoon again. The soup is less hot, but the tools spread out to xir left will make up for that.
His shoulders drop, fists unclenching, mouth opening obediently. Xe hums as xe slowly feeds him; he waits anywhere from a minute to five before pouring another small spoonful past his lips.
When he’s finished the soup, xe sets the bowl down on the table with a clink. “Now what do you say?” xe prompts as xe pulls on gloves and a dark red apron that once was brown.
A beat passes. “Thank you.”
Wyatt smiles wide and tugs the blindfold off of his face, not even giving him a moment to adjust to the light before holding a knife to his right eye, almost almost pressing in. It is a beautiful hazel color, gold and green and brown wide in delectable fear. “Good boy Elijah. Time for training.”
The windchimes play beautiful music outside as a car drives by.
Here's an excerpt/preview to the time-travel fix-it fic where (most) everyone lives/nobody dies, I'm currently writing. I'm trying to write it in snippets that when slappes together should form a decent-sized chapter (3000-4000 words). Hope this technique will work for me :) also this is totally not so i can give each snippet a title
So yeh Darrow's mind travels back on time into his body when he's buried post-execution, before the Sons of Ares find him. If you think it's written ambiguously, fear not, it's intentional (probably).
I'm not sure on the title yet. might change it later to something equally aesthetic lol
Unburied
Darrow wakes up buried.
Dark, red dirt surrounds him, chokes him. Blind panic engulfs him, but he retains enough sense to claw his way out, breaking his nails in the process. He gasps for breaths when he breaks out, damp air filling his desperate lungs. Through the haze of pain -his neck hurts, his back bleeds, but his head, oh his head is killing him- he sees the old tunnel he's in. The old tunnel. There's a flare next to his grave. The situation, as absurd and unbelievable as it is, slowly starts to make sense.
He's back.
He's back.
Or is he? What if this is some elaborate ruse? What if this is a dream? Darrow doesn't remember ingesting anything suspicious -Obsidian mushrooms, Purple drugs or other weird cosmic shit- but the solar system is vast and he is a man with many enemies, and many willful friends who wouldn't hesitate to mess with him and slip something into his food and drink.
His fingers dig into the red earth. Deep breaths. Deep breaths, Darrow. Calm down and wait to see what happens.
When the tumbler comes with the men in Octobernacht masks, he stays silent, choosing caution over that weird mix of hope and dread it drudges up in him. Shut the slag up and analyze the situation, as Victra once aptly said.
Where once he would've balked at strangers helping him, this time Darrow quietly curses as they haul him by his upper arms in the tumbler. His small, broken Red body is a foreign vehicle. Seeing Harmony again, even with her half-scarred face behind the mask, makes his sword hand twitch, but unlike their first meeting he doesn't say anything.
Silence, he has learned, invited curiosity. Which led to information.
"Lazarus," Harmony says finally, after a long stare, "You're a damn mess."
Darrow takes the scarlet headband out of his pants pocket and clenches it in his fist. He looks down at it and tries to calculate how many years it has been since he last saw it. Decennia. They feel like centuries.
"Home sweet home,” she says after they pass the checkpoint. And when they pile out of the tumbler, “Now time to meet Dancer.”
Dancer is as handsome and as old as Darrow remembers him. It takes all of his control to blink away the tears, to gulp down the words stuck in his throat. If this is a joke, it has to be the cruelest of them all. He's missed his steadfast, eternally burdened friend.
"You must be wondering who we are." Dancer says.
"The Sons of Ares." Darrow answers, and is infinitely glad his voice comes out steady, if toneless. Let them think him still shaken by Eo's death, by his execution. Better than they know the truth.
Dancer studies him, "You need a patch-up. Harmony, take care of him." Then again to him, "We'll talk when you're not bleeding all over the bloodydamn floor."
He ignores all of Harmony's attempts at smalltalk, and when those fail, at provocation. He doesn't know what to think of her, the indirect cause of Fitchner's death, Adrius and Roque's betrayals. Avoidance is working well so far. And her less than gentle treatment grounds him into the present. Present. He barely smothers a snort.
Right.
The antinac and the shower make all aches recede, save for the migraine plaguing him. It feels like his head is being split open. Darrow is gripping his hair when Dancer comes in with food.
"Bet you got a lot of questions."
Darrow frowns and forces himself to think past his headache, tries to remember how past him would act. Grieving. Angry. "Do they matter? Eo is dead. I should be with her in the Vale."
Well, that might be laying it on a little thick but they'll both survive his melodrama.
It's Dancer's turn to frown, "We saved your life, Darrow. So your life is ours. No dying for the dead today. Or tomorrow. Or any day from now on. You owe us. You owe Ares. Your uncle does too and he knows this."
"Is he dead?"
"No."
Darrow nods, but another lump has settled in his throat at the mention of his uncle. Uncle Narol. Long dead, shot by the Jackal. His last words resonate in Darrow's head, momentarily driving away his headache.
Dancer is studying him again. His bright eyes read him like an open book, drawing conclusions from the sorry sight he makes. Hopefully his align with what Darrow wants him to know. Then, like the first time, Dancer proposes the card game.
Darrow wins, although he's tempted to lose. Let another take his burden. Let another suffer in his place. But those are wistful musings, like how he sometimes wishes he could fly, or that he could breathe in space.
Dancer tells him about Ares, about the Conquering, about Rhea. He still uses the same damn flea metaphor as last time. Everything fits, except that this time, Darrow is an old, wartorn soul trapped in his first body.
Dancer talks about Eo, the martyr of hope, the symbol of the rebellion. Of more import in death than she ever was alive. "They call her Persephone."
"She’s not coming back,” he snaps, "So what does it matter what they call her?" Eo doesn't ever come back. But he does. Darrow, the reaper -unworthy, undeserving- does. Not for the first time, Darrow marvels at the unfairness of it all.
And then Dancer takes him to the view that had torn his world apart, once upon a time. "You tried to die before,” he says. “Do you want to do so again?”
"I want..." to go back. To stay. He wants Mustang and his children and Sevro and Victra and the life he fought so hard for. He wants Ragnar and Roque and Cassius and Quinn and Tactus. He wants to change history, wants his dead friends to meet his children. He wants to do it again, but better. Can he? Will he? There's only one way to find out. "I want a world where girls like Eo don't have to die for a dream."
It earns him a sad smile. "Justice. I feared you'd want only vengeance."
He shrugs, careful to not stray from his young, impulsive, brash self, "Whichever comes first."
Dancer shakes his head but continues to lead him towards the upper floors. Finally they reach it. He turns to him when they near a door, the door, "Don't let this break you."
They enter.
And the city of Gold that sprawls before them brings him to his knees.
Darrow cries then, all his pent-up fear and guilt and anger pouringout of him. A dam with its floodgates opened. "A lie," he says brokenly, "It has to be a lie." He means his miraculous disastrous return, the lie he keeps on telling himself, but is grateful when Dancer thinks it's about the lie they've both been fed.
He watches the bright city through hazy eyes -eyes that are so lacking compared to his Gold ones- barely listening to Dancer as the latter explains.
Every Color has a purpose. Every Color props up the Golds. Red lowest of them all.
Darrow is inclined to agree. This body is... less. Nothing is as easy, nothing is as clear, nothing is as good as his Gold carved body. He feels like a wolf trapped in the skin of a rabbit.
The acrid smell of smoke fills his nostrils. Dancer has lighted one. The same bloodydamn Pixie with his gaggle of girls flies by. Darrow makes a stiffled noise. Madness. This is madness.
"What will it take to take it back?" He recites dully from memory.
Dancer smiles, "Blood."
Darrow stares at that smile, fatherly, but hiding a fierce beast. He thinks of what this means, a second chance,or something else. Something damning. A gift? Or a lie hiding behind the farce of one?
"Eo was right. It takes violence." He takes Eo's headband out of his pocket, lost so long ago. He feels the weight of it. Of Eo's dream. Live for more. A burden he thought shed in the years following Virginia's coronation. Now again his task is to bear it and make it come true. He looks up into Dancer's bright eyes, and realizes that it's quiet inside his head. His mind is free of any pain, and when he speaks again, it's with the clearest sight he's had since crawling out of his grave.
The tears feel cold running down her cheeks, staining pale skin with saline chemical trails of remorse and released stress. It feels good. So good. As good and as cool as the light caress of a familiar touch slithers from dip of earlobe along the side of her neck to grace slip of shoulder.
And she stands there with her back to him, unable to protest, to move save to breath in shallow yet steady hitching gulps, eyes wide in the gloom while the rustle of fallen clothes pool about their feet.
Chloroform and antiseptic, formaldehyde and honey. His breath is warm washing over the back of her neck, a thousand tendrils of fingering caresses that weave through wisps of baby hair rising with a shiver.
She can refuse but she won’t. She can deny him, but she won’t. She can’t.
Are you cold, Angela?
The blond shakes her head once in a lethargic fog of anxious need, murmuring a plea to see his face instead of having to stare down at the garish mockery of an archaic mask resting on the dresser before her.
You know you don’t want that. Not really. You already know the results of your work, sweetheart.
The grin drips in every inflection made by that ravaged voice and she can feel it spread across disfigured features as lips hush words she’s been aching to hear.
Anything from him. Everything. Platitudes and abuse from him.
Whatever will make it all right again.
Whatever will make them whole again.
Whatever it’ll take to drain the ache from her heart caused by what she did to him.
A tepid hand to press a flattened, rough palm across her belly to dip below her navel. Another to cup and lift and squeeze her right breast with such mindful adoration.
Familiar words and touches and smells, a melange of her making in this monster of a man.
We make such a wonderful team, you and I, Angela. Now and even before Zurich.
Guys do i adjust human history to accommodate for people being able to go to send humans into space in like mid-1913 (or potentially earlier depending on how things go) so that i can include like 3 humans in my fantasy reality tv/sit-com esc comic or do i just scrap the humans?
