Danny sat on a blanket on a beach, staring out at the horizon. He could feel Vlad before he heard his footsteps in the sand before he could see the man carefully sit on the blanket next to him. He was holding two not-quite-plastic-not-quite-paper containers of some strange violently purple substance.
“Danny, have you tried one of these yet?” Vlad asked as he lifted one of the containers to his face and held the other a little closer to Danny. A bite-sized glob of the purple substance defied gravity for a moment and floated into his mouth. “The flavor is quite interesting, it’s like one of those old gapple variants. You remember back on-”
“Do you remember the first time we met?” Danny suddenly interrupted Vlad.
“Well, it was well over 100,000 years ago.” Vlad hummed, “But I do remember it.”
“You were plotting to kill my dad.” Danny commented. It was so strange that that hadn’t bothered Danny for literal millennia. His husband tried to kill his father the first time they met.
“I was also convinced I was in love with your mother.” Vlad added after another bite of purple goo. “I had known you existed before, but my interest was only in that you were… what was your mother’s name?”
Danny cringed… “Mom.”
Vlad hummed in commiseration – then gasped, “Madeline! She was Maddie!”
“Right!” Danny matched Vlad’s enthusiasm. “Mom was Maddie, and dad was… James?”
Vlad shrugged, “Hank, maybe?”
“No, it started with a J, like Jazz.” Danny added.
“Your sister! Of course.” Vlad added, “Jack then?”
Danny nodded, “Jack seems right.”
“I hated him so much at the time.” Vlad commented, “And then I hated him all over again. He’d mutated me into an undead monster and then he’d done the same thing to his son.”
“That’s not how I remember it.” Danny gave Vlad a look. “I remember you beating the shit out of me.”
“Oh, I didn’t know it was you.” Vlad grumbled.
“And Jack didn’t know he’d mutated me.” Danny said back.
There was a moment of silence as Danny stared out at the horizon again. Red waves of rust rich water crashing against a pale green sky under a white star. “We should go back to Earth. Check in on things.”
“Really?” Vlad asked with a tinge of excitement in his voice. “It’s been so long since we’ve been in the Milky Way.”
Danny chuckled, “We gotta go check on the cheese cave.”
“We HAVE to go check on the cheese cave!” Vlad agreed. “It’s been -1-2-3-4- 5000 years since we were last there!”
“Yeah, we should make sure your castle is still standing.” Danny added.
“I can assure you, it is not. But I bet your statue is.” Vlad cheekily added.
Danny rolled his eyes. “We should have gone back sooner.”
There was a moment of silence, then Vlad slowly asked, “Should we have?”
“Traveling around space has been fun, but…”
“We started when the last of your friends faded,” Vlad sighed, “When there was nothing left to hold keep us there.”
“I mean, there were still people we knew.” Danny rubbed the back of his head, “Jazz’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids still counted me as family.”
“They barely knew why you were there in the first place.” Vlad said more to himself than to Danny. “But, I agree that we should go back...”
“The cheese cave.”
“The cheese cave!” Vlad agreed, but continued. “And, it was our home. Where we were born, where we grew up-”
“Mostly.” Danny said, waving a still teenage hand between them.
“Mostly.” Vlad sighed, then he took Danny's hand and held it to his chest. “I just miss it, too.”
They sat there, staring at an alien horizon. Danny remembered being so excited for stuff like this. He remembered the first time Vlad took him into space – the Interplanitary Earth Station, built off the original ISS, as a launch point for researchers and workers to get sent on missions to other planets and asteroids. First Mars, then Venus, then the asteroid belt, and eventually the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, then slowly making their way out of the solar system, then out of the galaxy, until getting from a random planet millions of light-years away to Earth only took a few years to travel.
Danny sighed, then reached over and took the purple goo Vlad hadn’t eaten yet. “So, what is this called?”
Danny had just gotten it in rage to float into his mouth when Vlad answered, “Stewed Boulder Shit.”
Danny froze. It tasted like static, a little to the left. “What?”
Vlad shrugged with a huge grin on his face, “It means I can add "shit" to the desserts swear list.”
Really only uploading this bc i don't think I'll ever finish it, but hey. Legend does himself a mischief. Thats it.
Mere panels before Legend tests Hyrule over the stone wall, for anyone who's read it. I very much enjoyed writing that bit. Don't mind Sky, he's just having a full asthma attack, its fine. It's being handled.
(and if Legend looks slightly worried, he says lies! Lies and slander! He's too experienced for feelings!!)
I wish this one was a bit better as far as the composition goes since Fuyuhiko’s one of my favourites, but at least the clouds emulating Junko pigtails is fun lol
