Grenda paced the length of the community center, hands running over
her weapon. Her mind kept going back to the last near-apocalypse they’d
all been involved in, back when she was still a child and unable to do
anything to help the girl and her brother who’d been two of the only
ones to accept her as she was, without trying to change something about
her, and the ‘incident’, as it was being called, of a few months ago.
If she never had to see that again…if Mabel was like a sister to
her, then demon or not, Dipper was like an annoying, slightly bratty
brother, and she still wanted to beat heads in for what they’d done to
him. And that was before she started in on them for the trauma to her
animals.
Across the room, her husband was calming down a couple who had
started to panic about being trapped in the community center. Her kids
(and wasn’t that amazing, still, that she had kids, the one who’d
thought once she’d never be able to have kids at all, not even adopted)
were sticking close to the Ramirez Seven.
Candy had set up shop in the small balcony that surrounded this part
of the community center, near a window, where she could keep a lookout.
It may have been deceptive, but it still felt pretty safe in here,
inside the center. Thankfully there was food down in the kitchens (there
had been some kind of event planned for what should have been the next
day, and after all the things that went on in Gravity Falls, well, right
now they were keeping places like this stocked in case of
emergencies…though no one had ever expected an emergency like this) as
it was getting close to dinnertime.
At least, Grenda thought it was getting close to dinnertime. Time was
behaving oddly right now, as the clock above the door had at once point
been ticking away faster than any clock she’d ever seen, and was now
running backwards.
She knew she wasn’t hungry, and her kids weren’t complaining about it
yet. Usually Hansel, at least, wasn’t shy about letting others know
when he was hungry.
Grenda passed by a small, curtained alcove as she continued her
patrol around the room, and paused at the tiny noise she thought she
heard from behind the curtain.
For a second, she was tempted to keep moving, but she hadn’t made it
this far in Gravity Falls by not paying attention to things.
Mira picked the phone up on the fourth ring, plugging it into the wall port to bring the call up on the TV’s screen and toggling the camera to ‘off’. She was in no state to be seen by anyone, especially not the photo-perfect Rosa Darling, who had probably never gotten a giant stress zit on her chin in her life.
“Oh,” Alcor smiled widely. “So you want to make a deal?”
“I want to never have the future tell me what to do again,” Vin said firmly. “If making a deal is the way to get that done, then fuck yeah deal me up.”
“Vin,” Renee said gently. “I’m not going to tell you not to do this, but you are talking about making a deal with the most powerful demon we know about. Please be careful.”
“Oh you know me.” Vin waved his hand like he were clearing away the insinuation that he, of all people, might be anything other than cautious. “‘Careful’ is my true name. Now, what do I gotta give you to get you to eat my third eye or whatever?”
Hank was, unfortunately, more used to waking from being knocked unconscious than he liked to be.
Which
meant he had plenty of practice at taking stock of his surroundings as
quickly as possible once he managed to wake up, without having to bother
with fuzzy stages between unconscious and awake.
He cracked open his eyes, glancing around and trying not to let on that he’d regained consciousness just yet.
Then
he felt something nudge the back of his head, and long association told
him it was a nightmare snout before he could panic. Sure that they
wouldn’t be simply nudging him if there was danger (since the nightmares
could be just as bad as Uncle Dipper when it came to being
overprotective), Hank opened his eyes properly and sat up.
That of
Teeth stepped back, giving him room as he took in his surroundings. If
Hank had to guess, he’d say he was back in the town square, but…the
platform was back, the cross the Alliance had tied Uncle Dipper to on it
still standing, though tilted and unsteady looking. He knew that thing
had been chopped up and burned down…hell, he had roasted marshmallows
over it! So why the hell was it standing again?
More than the
cross was different from before, he realized after staring at it for a
few more seconds. The platform was made of old, jagged wood, unlike the
smooth surface the Alliance had built, and the whole thing looked
unsteady and dangerous. The cross itself wasn’t the smooth thing he’d
seen, but just as jagged and painful looking as the rest of the
platform, and it gave Hank the shivers and made bile rise in his throat
to look at it.
Since this was at least partially his uncle’s
mindscape…Hank had a pretty good idea for why both platform and cross
looked like that.
When I hit 200 followers, I promised I was going to write more of The Rosewood Affair. It’s taken a while, but here is the first of what’s shaping up to be quite a few parts.
The rest of the old fic is also edited and shoved into its own work, finally, right here, so go check that out if you want.
“Cousins are gonna be nice, though.” Ruben
looked wistfully into the air, leaning back against the wall of the stairwell.
Katie smiled at him. It was always nice to
see her friends being happy.
“Eh,” Linda shot in over her lunch from the
other side of the stairwell. “They’re still gonna be family, and tiny ones
beside. It’s not great.”
“You don’t like any of your family,
though,” Katie argued with her. “Ruben actually does, so I don’t think it’s a
good comparison.”
Linda shrugged and hid her smile under a
piece of lunch fish. “I like my Grams, and Nagisa’s… tolerable, I guess. Just
saying you shouldn’t get your hopes up, is all.”
Katie rolled her eyes, still smiling. She
knew Linda was mostly joking.
Ruben looked over at her.
“You get what I mean, right?” he asked. “I
mean, I’ve never had a cousin before, just siblings. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Katie said. “It’s different
for everyone, I think. I like my cousins well enough, but it takes all kinds,
right? Anyways, yeah, babies sounds cool.”
Ruben nodded, and turned to the last person
sitting on the stairs. “What about you?”
Alvie looked up from his ‘lunch’ with a
start. “What about me?”
Woo sort of something I wrote for the new year’s ficathon, lots of fun, yep yep
Backstory on a lot of my characters for tau
Three girls walked down the side of a small country road. They were all identical, the small town’s resident triplets. They weren’t paying very much attention to where they were going, as hardly any cars drove down that road.
It was a sunny day in mid-October, the time when it just started to cool down in the rural Texas town the lived in. the crops this year had been planted later than usual, it had been a longer winter than normal the year before, the almost freezing weather lasting almost all the way through February, so the cotton fields on either side of the road were still filled with fluffy white cotton bolls.
AO3 highly highly recommend. The opening dialogue uses fonts to distinguish who’s talking and I have no clue if that will work on mobile.
… That said it is not unreasonable to assume that the recording can be trusted as a source of the details of the encounter. The fact that Magi Hurtzog was killed by subject A is indisputable. It is fully possible that Subject B fabricated some or all of the recording, but changing the apparent method of death would accomplish little. The most logical reason to give the Institute the recording would be as a warning, and altering the apparent events that took place would not significantly increase the effectiveness of the warning. Even under highly unfavorable circumstances Subject A is still deadly, regardless of the methods used.
If we assume that the recording is largely unaltered there is a lot that we can
Actually I did alter the recording. Not that anyone’s found what I added yet.
What?
I go through the effort of giving half the security team googly eyes and no one even bothers paying attention to the background. Honestly, you people. And no one’s bothered checking for encrypted information yet! All those extremely nice messages I left in there are just sitting unread.
Here’s my official Fic-a-thon entry,
enjoy the introduction of a type of magical creature rarely mentioned
in fiction. Next story: Clamcor
Maddie swung the pink, spiked baseball
bat that her dad had given her into the side of smugglers head with a
sickening thud and watched him go down hard. Breathing heavily, she
spun around only to find that there were were no foes left.
It had been more than a year and a
half since Toby’s death, she still hadn’t completely forgiven him for
not letting her be a proper Mizar sooner, perhaps if she had been
things would be different. Ever since the two had that talk after the
funeral she had been undergoing intensive training in combat,
magic and tactics. Then yesterday Alcor
had told her about the smugglers who would soon be docking in
Spokeane. Father and daughter had blipped to the harbour and Alcor
had called out a challenge from the bottom of the gangplank, and in a
few seconds the two had been surrounded by a dozen thugs.
Maddie looked down at the burned and
beaten bodies of the smugglers and was violently sick. Her dad flew
down from where he’d been burning ‘Alcor and Mizar were here’ into
the side of the small container ship and put his arm around her.
“Are you okay Mizar?”
“I’m fine Alcor, I just didn’t
expect them to make that noise when hit with this thing.
Alcor looked around at the carnage,
“Your aunt Mabel would be proud kid.”
The girl smiled faintly, “thanks,
now lets go rescue those captives.”
The two quickly made their way though
the ship taking out the few stragglers as they went, a few
surrendered and were left tied togather on the deck for the poliece
to pick up. Once the pair were sure there was no one left, the two
made their way to the cargo hold,.
Most of the hold was filled with boxes
of magical contraband, but about a third of it was divided between a
workshop and several rows of empty cages. Confused, Maddie went to
look at the workshop and started crying. It was filled with dissected
corpses, the organs of which were carefully preserved for sale.
“We’re too late,” she said softly.
“No look!” Alcor was standing by
the farthest cage.
Cowering in the cage was the weirdest
looking magical creature that Maddie had ever seen. It looked like an
old fashioned paper umbrella but instead of a handle it had a single,
long, birdlike leg. On the oiled paper were two rips, on of with
showed a single round eye, and the second had a look slimey tongue
poking out.
“What is it…?”
“Alcor knelt down and began picking
the cages lock with his claw. “Its a Karakasa Kozo or paper
umbrella priest boy. You know how these smugglers came from Japan,
well those islands have some pretty weird magic energies which often
result it old objects and animals changing, like this guy.
Alcor grinned with satisfaction as the
lock clicked open.
Maddie rolled her eyes, “Your such a
dork Alcor.” She pushed her dad away from the cage and knelt down
in front of it. “Its okay little one,” she said comfortingly. “We
got rid of all the smugglers, your safe now and we’ll take you back
to your home.”
The umbrella yokai began crying, “No
home, nowhere to go! Rikku and friends give bad men everything to
take us to better life across big water. Bad men lock all in cages
then kill one by one. Only Rikku left. Bad men say Rikku have no
insides to sell. Rikku have no home, no family and now, no
friends…” It broke down completely, howling with misery.
Maddie took the weeping yokai in her
arms and gently rocked it. “There, there, you can come stay with
us, we’ll give you a place to belong.”
Alcor gave his daughter a look that
spoke volumes, she shot him one back that said more. They locked eyes
for a long moment but finally the demon nodded, he knew she was right
and this kind of creature wasn’t dangerous. Still there was something
he’d have to discuss with his daughter later. He snapped his fingers
and blipped the three home.
Rikku would go on to live with them
for the next three years, it took months to recover from his terrible
ordeal and begin making trips outside the house. He loved to jump out
and surprise visitors with a huge oiley lick, but he would only do
that to Maddie if she was having a particularly bad nightmare about
Toby. It never failed to jerk her awake. He would often wait
anxiously while Maddie was out cult bashing with her dad. In the end
he got a job at a haunted house attraction, which paid enough for him
to live on his own, even then he would often come to visit them.
Henry was working on dinner in the kitchen when he noticed his five year old Acacia quickly coming into the room, opening a drawer, grabbing something, and then leaving, before he could say hello. Wondering what had just happened he put his preparations on hold to go see what Acacia was up to. Walking into the lounge room Henry spotted his oldest daughter sitting next to the couch with her back turned away from him, fiddling with something in her hands.
“Hey Acacia, what do you have there?” Henry asked squatting closer to her level near the ground.
“An apple!” She held up a bright red apple so her father could see, lowered it, and then raised something that Henry really, really wished she didn’t have. “And a knife!” Acacia said proudly, as if thinking he would be pleased to see her with such a sharp object. Well that explained why she was in the kitchen.
“NO! Give me that!” blurted out Henry grabbing the knife and holding it out of reach.
“Aww, why?”
“Because kids aren’t supposed to have sharp knives.”
“I’m not a kid! I’m a big school girl,” she pouted, crossing her arms, apple forgotten on the floor. “And Uncle Dipper let Hank use the knife yesterday to cut his sandwich!” Of course his brother had.
“Yes well Uncle Dipper shouldn’t have and is himself a child so is also banned from knifes.” And the kitchen, when he was done having a chat with him about what is and isn’t appropriate for five year olds. “Why do you even want a knife anyway?”
“I wanted to have apple slices!” Acacia picked up the apple again, showing what she had planed to cut up.
“You could have just asked.”
“But I wanted to use the knife myself!”
“Sorry darling but that’s not happening just yet.” Acacia looked down at the ground, continuing to pout. She was so sure she could handle the knife herself, why couldn’t her Dad just let her show how grown up she was?
Not wanting to leave her all upset, Henry had an idea. “Why don’t you come help me finish getting dinner ready?” He offered, hoping that would help make her feel better without just giving her the sharp knife. She looked back up at him, her face lit up brightly.
“Can I use the knife?”
“Not that one, but there is a different one you could use.”
Cheering Acacia jumped to her feet and rushed to the kitchen closely followed by Henry. Opening the cutlery drawer he took out a different knife, sharp enough to cut a few vegetables, blunt enough he didn’t need to worry about his daughter cutting herself. He gave it to Acacia as well as a carrot on a chopping board, showing her how to use it properly, and, most importantly, safely. She happily chopped up the carrot, as well as a few others, and dinner was full of her proudly sharing how she helped, and got to use a knife.
Henry then found Willow in the kitchen the next morning, wanting in on the chance to use a knife herself. He was only mildly surprised really given her demands during dinner to use a “proper one” as well.
The End
———
My first attempt at a one-shot for the TAU ficathon, hope you all like it ^-^
Went on a
scouting mission today, not much happened, but we managed to find a child. He
was wearing some really strange clothing, some sort halfway cut off pants, with
a chest covering that lacked sleeves and some sort of odd hat with a 2 on it.
It seems he does not have family to take care of him, tomorrow we are going to
run some medical scans to see what sort of condition he is in and then decide
what to do with him.
Log 2
Recruiter- Jenny Cristoson
What
Luck! The kid we grabbed yesterday has magical potential, some of the greatest
ever recorded, and better yet it seems like he isn’t even aware of it! He doesn’t
have any recorded family either, probably some kid whose parents were too poor
to afford a doctor or an official birth record. The Court has taken him in and
he will be assigned a handler tomorrow. I hope he does well here!
Log 3
Handler- Jenny Cristoson
I’ve received
a promotion! I’ve been assigned to the kids’ case. His name is Jhon, and he is
a bright, but nervous, boy. We planned to do some more testing to see if we can
determine what sort of magical abilities he may possess, but the machine broke
down. Starting tomorrow we are going to be doing manual testing, I really hope
he doesn’t have anything dangerous. Wouldn’t want a repeat of some of the
earlier magic user tests.
backup 