#gonna make art for this later | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

midwinterhunt · 7 months

Text

I was a teen, just trying to borrow my mom's car. Going to some event or another. I was driving down a slope and the car got going really fast and I couldn't make the breaks work fast enough and an intersections was coming up... I decided that I was in the middle of the road, no cars were parked around me, and no one behind me, so it was better to spin out than go into the intersection.

I almost rolled. Almost. In the end I pulled over to the curb to check the damage. No obvious dents, but the tires were all loose and bent where they were mounted and one had been torn at the rubber and was very flat.

While I was assessing the damage a cop showed up. Luckily it didn't seem like he'd seen my spinout, but he was asking questions. I mostly tried to play it off as me just having a flat, nothing had happened, but he was pretty persistent. At some point my mom showed up and we started really going over the damage and the cop kept going further and further out of his way to make me say something that would have it seem like i did something illegal and I was getting really nervous.

At some point a boy showed up to watch. He seemed to be about my age, lanky, brown hair so dark it looked black, and I never got a good look at his eyes. For some reason I couldn't focus on his eyes. Either he was facing away from me, or I was looking down at his hands, or any other reason, not once would I ever be able to fully take in his eyes.

Before the cop got too much to work with, this boy started making a scene about what was under the elevated porches of two buildings on one of the lots. And I shit you not, there were two pizzas, thirty feet across, just chilling under the houses. The boy also pointed out a sign that read "Official Ninja Turtle Filming Location". The cop was successfully distracted by this, and honestly so was I. That was pretty wild, and how did I not notice that before?

After the cop left I got talking to the Boy, asking questions. I Couldn't believe there was a movie being filmed here and when I tried to look for the sign again I couldn't find it.* All the signage was just about this being a boy's home for troubled kids. The Boy just grinned and didn't comment on it. Instead he had me follow him. (the pizza, too, was gone the next time I looked)

*Dreamer's Note: I can usually go back and read things multiple times in my dreams without trouble. I never have to deal with something saying different words each time I read it, so I was very confused to experience this.

We went into the boy's home, which,,,, really should have been labeled a daycare with the age of the kids there. There was one adult, and a bunch of kids all under the age ten. The Boy produced a balloon and baby doll out of seemingly nowhere and handed them to the kids who went feral over them, much to the dismay of the adult on shift. I took pity on the poor man and got the toys back, but the ruckus had summoned one of the head staff, who demanded what we were doing there. Me and Boy lied and said we were volunteers, and our horrible lie was fully believed. We giggled and Boy grabbed my hand and we ran out with wild abandon.

We spent the day together, having fun, becoming friends, getting into trouble and not getting caught. It was dark before we started walking home. We were passing by a field of cows, still fully engrossed in conversation, although my eyes were drawn to the ground in front of me instead of looking at him. At some point I realized he wasn't beside me anymore so I stopped and looked back. He was a good ten feet away and suddenly putting on a ski mask.

I was just confused, "What are you doing???"

"Didn't you see it?" And with that he jumped the fence and ran to pull a calf out of a water trough, which I had not seen, no, because I was staring at the ground. The calf was limp and fell to the ground once pulled out, not breathing. But since it wasn't stiff it could still be alive. The Boy was fretting, but after pulling it out he wasn't doing anything super useful.

"Don't you know how to do cow CPR?!" I shouted, as if that was a normal thing to know.*

*Dreamer's Note: I irl know emergency medical protocols for farm animals because i was a farm kid and yes, this is a situation I could actually handle. (how i handled in the dream could have been better)

He gave me a look like I'd grown a second head. I only hesitated for a second before I jumped the fence to help the calf. I started talking through ways to get a heart pumping again, getting air back in the lungs, getting water out, but in the end it just needed held up and a bit of good pressure to help cough out the water and start trying to breath again. Apparently it hadn't actually been in the water very long.

We were about to celebrate our relief and success when a bright flight flashed over us and a rough voice shouted "HEY!" There was a rancher with a gun, and we were a couple kids trespassing on his property with his livestock with a coughing soaked calf next to us and one of us in a ski mask. Naturally we bolted.

It was weird, the world seemed to warp and bend and then suddenly we were in a barren empty field without any life, only hard packed dirt. The Boy was so apologetic and frantic and it took me a while to get him to calm down enough to explain.

He explained that he had powers. He didn't explain where they came from, or what he was, but he had the power to shape things around him. Such as making pizza and a sign appear, or toys, or being able to warp his form to travel very quickly. He never meant to do that to me, it was just a reflex. He had warped my body with his, making us one body for the few microseconds it took to move us away from the situation. It was just for the blink of an eye, but it was enough to alter me into being what he was. He changed me to be like him. He'd only wanted to help, to have a friend, and now he'd ruined my life.

I assured him that it was okay, nothing had been ruined. I didn't feel any different. He said that wasn't the problem. He'd been on the run from the authorities his whole life. They were trying to capture him for who knows what reason and that made it impossible to have a home, friends, .....family. And of course I still had a mom who loved me. It started to sink in that I might have to actually not be fully grasping what this meant.

We spent the summer teaching me how to use my new powers. I learned how to will things into existence, but it was hard to alter the forms of myself and other things. But we did grow very close and could easily meld our bodies into one, and when we did that it was easy for both of us to change our shape in whatever way we desired.

It was during one of our regular practices when we found the barrier. It was early evening, so the glow of the minty green field was lighting up like auroras. The Boy recognized it, the military group that was chasing him often used it to try to keep him trapped. Of course to the ordinary eye the barrier was nearly invisible, and completely intangible. But to those with powers, it was nearly impassible. See, the barrier worked with fields of light and energy, and prevented anything that didn't share its artificial pattern from passing through. And of course the agency's powered members had their patterns forcibly reformatted to match.

The Boy was very confident that we could change our patterns and slip through, but we couldn't stay here any longer. We had to get ready and leave so we weren't tracked down and captured. I.... didn't want to leave my mom, but this was all getting real very fast.

We packed light, just a single backpack for each of us. I'd been told the route beforehand, I knew the pattern I needed to have, although I was hoping to rely on us combining to be sure I could do it right. But I knew we just had to head west, reach the border, get out of range.

Everything went very wrong. When we got there, the patterns had changed and we couldn't get through, and it would take time to learn the new pattern, and we could hear the sounds of trucks and men coming our way. Luckily the Boy had a plan B.

We ran the other way, down back trails and alleys. There was a contact we could meet, an old man, who had a way to get us out of the barrier. Unfortunately the group chasing us was closing in. The Boy pushed me forward, told me to keep moving, that he'd distract them then catch up. I was scared, so I did as told. I ran until I hit a fence, then went along it until I met the contact at a break. He rushed me through and ordered me to run and hide, there wasn't time to explain.

I ducked into the grass, but when I heard the trucks pull up I was too scared to move. All I heard was a back and forth, the old man insisting that they had nothing to search for here, some stern voices, then a gunshot. The old man fell to the ground and flashlights passed over the area. There was a moment where the lights retreated and I let myself breath. But then the commanding officer paused and turned back, shined his light right over me, and began to approach. I curled in on myself as much as possible, hoping I could just disappear. The officer reached out a hand and I blacked out.

There was a specific military organization that specialized in containing powered individuals, and using these human weapons to deal with... more than normal threats. This agency was top secret, naturally.

They put me through the same process they did for every person they brought in: have me an inhibitor arm cuff so I could only use my powers in authorized ways, put me through weeks of training, both with my powers and military training, and they broke down my physical body into the basest form of my powers. Which meant instead of looking human, I now had an orange crystalline look, yet my body was pliable. Orbs had replaces my hands, feet, and even head. I was faceless. They didn't give me clothes, after all, I had nothing to cover.

When I was finally able to reunite with the Boy, he looked the same at me. After all, the same power would have the same base form. We were taken to a holding block with several other powered individuals who were all pretty jaded from living like this for so long. Many of them could no longer speak after having their forms altered, and one of them seemed to have lost his ability to reason. He specifically looked a bit like a dog sized dinosaur, a raptor of some kind, but on four legs instead of two, and he was pecking at their food tray on the ground like a bird. Another resident, a grayish green small fellow in an orange jumpsuit was chastising the dino kid for eating like an animal.

I told the little guy, and I do mean little like less than a foot tall, to lay off the kid, they couldn't help it. Well Little Guy got all up in my case demanding who I thought I was, talking to the strongest guy in the room like that when I was just a greenie.

The Boy easily took over, his endless confidence making me feel stronger as he took my hand. "Not anymore," he said, "We're the strongest." He gently tugged on my hand and I could practically read his intent through our contact. We backed up in perfect sync and sat with our backs together in a nearly mirrored confident pose as the Boy explained that our powers were limitless. We could make anything. Out of the same kind of faux light construct* that many power users could make, we could create proper material objects. And we demonstrate this together, by making a couple of round things of light, then turning them solid and tossing them over.

*A Faux Light Construct is light particles shaped into an object, but it is transparent and dissipates the moment it loses contact with the maker.

After that showing, the two of us became pretty respected. And we convinced the powered residents that we didn't have to stay as weapons, we couldn't be kept here. Together we were strong enough to escape. And we were.

It took us a long time, but we did get everything ready. We staged a prison riot that me and the Boy used as cover to break the ballistic glass. It only took a little manipulation of out arms into long powered vine-like things with hardened pointed to shoot out at the glass. We did that over and over, the spiderweb crack growing each time. Of course the director of the program noticed, but it was too late. The glass shield shattered and we all took off. Me and the Boy were the most powerful, most dangerous, most valuable of all of the others even put together, to we were the distraction. All the others were able to run to safety and get underground to care for themselves while we took to the sky. It was easy to get the inhibitors off once we got into the airfield, then we merged and took the form of one of their fastest jets and took off. The chase was close, even when we tried to give ourself more thruster power, we couldn't shake them. We had an idea though. They were hunting the strongest, fastest thing in the sky, not some dinky little farm plane that was so slow it could practically hover in a headwind.

We dove into a cloud, transformed into the shittiest plane we could imagine, made an illusion of the plane we used to be to keep our course for a while, then we headed west. Into the sunset.

And that is why we are here, little human, speaking to you now. We came to this old forest years ago, to hide among the redwood trees. These are the only ones that grow large enough to hide the size we grow to. And even then we must still trim ourself shorter frequently.

You see, we are not whole. We can't separate anymore, because something is Wrong. If we separate, we might not survive. Or at least, one of us won't. A most beloved piece of us is gone. So we stay and wait until we are whole. Until our missing piece returns.

I am the Boy. You see, I knew that a decoy plane would never work. There were ground teams watching, they would spot us even as the air team chased our illusion. So when we dropped low to the ground, I separated. Or, most of me did. I left my heart with the Girl so she wouldn't realize I was gone until she was safe. And it worked. I disguised myself as a soldier and joined their ground team, and from their I spun an illusion of the dinky plane going south. The ground team fired on it, but quickly realized something was off. I turned back and smiled when the Director realized there was One Too Many people here. I turned my illusion into projectiles, sharp and piercing, that rained down on the agency that had made my life hell, chased me for centuries, stolen my body, taken everything from the one person I could ever truly be close to... The only other person who may live as long as I will.... I am ready to sacrifice my life to at least give her freedom. I can't live away from my core forever, but I'll make damn sure I live long enough to ensure there won't be anyone left to hunt our kind ever again!

#mid dreams #short story #i have an *interesting* mind #i didn't come up with this on purpose it was literally a dream #my brain writes stories for free i just have to jot them down #its amazing #gonna make art for this later

3 notes · View notes

omaano · 5 months

Text

Touchy subject

"The 501st was one of the best legions during the war. I've lost a lot of good men over the years - some of them would have given even you Mandos a run for your credits. And my general... My general was a good man too, but that's enough of that, I thought you were too old for bedtime stories by now."

Din just tried to figure out what the colour of the clones' armor paint meant, and why he's never heard Rex mention his CO during all the wartime stories and lectures; whereas he's already got to meet Wolffe and his general and even heard Cody mention his every once in a blue moon. (Special thanks to @witchydom for helping with the "dialogue" :3)

The rest of my Star Wars meets Hades AU project is here

I'll take a bit of your time to give a bit of an explanation why I decided to put Rex in Skelly's spot:

During a playthrough when I was looking for screenshots to use as backgrounds the first thing that greeted me was Zagreus calling Skelly "Captain" upon entering the armoury, or whatever that chamber is called. And that really decided it, let's be honest. Rex is Captain, and that is the Captain's spot. End of story.

Reading "still got it" by qigiined even before I got into watching TCW was such a personality defining experience (seriously, this fic lives forever rent free in my brain), that I really had no other option but to put the few clones that I'm willing to work into this AU somewhere around home base (the covert) - so you can guess where Cody and Wolffe are situated. Or will be, hopefully soon enough. Rex needs to be able to hang out with Cody, that's just how it is. (Rebels and TBB canon who?)

Rex deserves to teach some uppity Mando bounty hunters and other warriors who think too much of themselves a few lessons in humility and some crafty tricks. I think it would be very good for him.

As a throwaway note since we are already under the read more section, I've been thinking about sigils and keepsakes (trinkets) and cthonic companions (I know that over a year ago I inaccurately but very self indulgently designed one for Din, Boba and Cobb, that is not the point now) and while Cody can have one shaped like Boga, and Wolffe can obviously get a stuffed loth wolf (and Bo-Katan a very squishy owl)... I have no idea what shaped companion Rex could have. If anyone has any suggestions and would love to share it with me, I'd be very grateful!