Okay I gotta know your thoughts on Grimm and the Troupe in this pirate AU that's going on pls.
Nice ship, spooky-looking thing but the crew’s all minstrels. sometimes they pull into ports and perform. They’re not pirates and, in fact, basically don’t have any illegal dealings to speak of. (Well, not the sort most would fault them for; they’re known to defy the creeds of unjust monarchs)
Pirates generally avoid them. Superstitious folks, and all, and a ship with blood red sails isn’t one you really want to board with ill intentions.
A few old timers from different parts of the sea claim that there used to be a ship very similar to that one, spotted here or there, but one night, the ship was lit ablaze and burned down with no survivors. Rumors are it was someone else with a grudge, but witnesses claim that the crew of the ship stayed on deck playing music the entire time as the vessel sank. Some swear you can still hear the song on quiet nights when the moon is bright and the seas calm.
It probably has nothing to do with the faint, inescapable smell of wood smoke in the timbers of the modern ship.
Sarah had woken up to the high tings of a music box. Normally, she would have been annoyed (it was a school day after all), but somehow the notes it played perfectly aligned to soothe her.
Was this a dream? Oddly, she no longer felt tired. She looked over, letting her blurred vision focus on the small toy in the middle of her room.
Curiosity getting the best of her, she threw the covers off and jumped onto the floor, stretching her legs before going to source of the music.
The first thing she noticed were the various stickers plastered all over the music box. They all said the same thing:
“Dr. Wondertainment’s Happily Ever After Music Safe(tm)
With this you are safe. Dream a dream with a smile on your face and it will come true!”
Looking over it, she found another label at the bottom, written in bright red ink:
“PLEASE ENSURE YOU REPLACE THE BATTERIES EVERY TWO WEEKS. ONLY DREAM HAPPY DREAMS.”
Huh. She placed it on her bed. Maybe her mom left it for her as some sort of gift. It continued to play an upbeat song, which seemed to follow her as she walked to the kitchen. She didn’t mind though. It was a nice song.
Her mother would greet her with a smile and a plate of her favorite breakfast meal: chocolate chip pancakes.
Her dad would walk in, ready for work, and tell her that school had been cancelled for the day.
She would go outside and find that it’s sunny and warm (but not too warm), which was just perfect for her.
From that moment on, she knew it would be a perfect day.
A perfect week.
A perfect month.
A perfect year.
A dream come true.
A dream that drifted on a neverending stream of pleasant notes.
She would never learn that the sun had broke.
Or that her father had worked overnight, sleeping at his office desk as the red beams of a rising sun touched him.
Or that her mother had left early to get groceries, stepping outside to see the that the world had collapsed, that her body was turning to ooze.
Or that they had returned home, melded together with an assortment of animals and neighbors, looking for their former daughter, only to find that she had vanished.
She would never learn that her dream was hidden away from a world that had ended.
Not until she forgot to replace the batteries.
---
Somehow, they had known. The moment the sun broke, they had known.
Eight minutes was all it took for the corrupted light to reach earth.
Eight minutes to create one final toy to save them.
They had tried their best, sweeping away a project that had taken months to build (”The Next Big Thing!” their PR department called it), and letting every law and constant of reality bend to their racing imagination.
In four minutes they had created a simple music box, one that would play a song that was fitted to be as pleasant as possible to the owner. Not only that, but it would transport them to their own little pocket dimension, where they became the masters of their own world.
It was a shoddy job. A rushed job. There was no telling what would happen if the users realized that they were living in a fake world. There was no telling what would happen if they started to manifest their nightmares instead of whatever happy dream they had. There was no telling what sort of untested side-effects would come with creating so many reality benders.
What was important was that they were hidden away from the sun.
Wondertainment sighed, and for the first time, held a look once forbidden from their face: sadness.
Only a few hundred of those music boxes were able to be created and shipped out before the sun’s light reached earth.
When it did, billions of imaginations, feelings of wonder, creativity, and all the other aspects of fun that made up humanity vanished in an instant.
For Wondertainment Enterprises, this was reflected in plummeting stocks. In employees being let go and machinery shutting down.
For Doctor Wondertainment, it meant a loss of magic, power, or whatever it was that allowed them to create in the first place.
Aside from the children that had been saved, there were still a few pockets of survivors hidden away, though they were few and far in between.
Perhaps they would persist. Perhaps humanity would survive through this, just like they had in so many other situations.
The idea was enough to give a glimmer of hope to the deflated doctor.
If they did, Wondertainment would be waiting, with a smile on their face and shiny new toy in their hand.
// So anyway I love your portrayal of Dabi and I treasure every instance of a new post I see from you of this accidental himbo, bless you for existing and writing the Dabsaster.
[ jseif thank you so much, i hope you enjoy the Dabsaster as much as I enjoy writing him ]
