Your Ancient History, Written In Wax
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Danny knew he should have put better security around the Sarcophagus of Eternal Sleep. It wasn’t even Vlad who opened it this time! The fruitloop was too busy doing his actual mayor duties because for some godforsaken reason, the man got re-elected.
No, it wasn’t Vlad. And it wasn’t Fright Knight, either. Nor the Observants. Who opened the Sarcophagus, then? Danny didn’t have time to find out as Pariah Dark promptly tore open a hole in reality and hunting Danny down.
The battle was longer this time. He didn’t have the Ecto-Skeleton, as that was the first thing Pariah had destroyed. The halfa had grown a lot over the past few years, and learned some new tricks, but apparently sleeping in a magic ghost box meant that Pariah had absorbed a lot of power. The bigger ghost acted like a one-man army!
Amity Park was caught in the middle of the battle, but the residents made sure it went no further than that. Vlad and the Fentons made a barrier around the town to keep the destruction from leaking. Sam, Tucker, and Dani did crowd control while Danny faced the king head-on.
Their battle shook the Zone and pulled them wildly between the mortal plane and the afterlife. Sometimes, residents noticed a blow from Pariah transported them to the age of the dinosaurs, and Phantom’s Wail brought them to an unknown future. Then they were in a desert. Then a blazing forest. Then underwater. It went on like that, but no one dared step foot outside of Amity. They couldn’t risk being left behind.
It took ages to beat him, but eventually, Danny stood above the old ghost king, encasing his symbols of power in ice so they couldn’t be used again. He refused to claim the title for himself. Tired as he was, Danny handed the objects off to Clockwork for safe keeping and started repairing the damage Pariah had done to the town. The tear he’d made was too big to fix, for now, so no one bothered. They just welcomed their new ghostly neighbors with open arms and worked together to restore Amity Park.
Finally, the day came to bring down the barrier. People were gathered around the giant device the Fentons had built to sustain it. Danny had brought Clockwork to Amity, to double check that they had returned to the right time and dimension.
Clockwork assured everyone that they were in the right spot, and only a small amount of time had passed, so the Fentons gave the signal to drop the shield.
Very quickly did they discover that something was wrong. The air smelled different. The noise of the nearby city, Elmerton, was louder and more chaotic. Something was there that wasn’t before, and it put everyone on edge.
Clockwork smiled, made a remark about the town fitting in better than before, and disappearing before Danny could catch him.
Frantic, Danny had a few of his ghost buds stay behind to protect the town while he investigated.
He flew far and wide, steadily growing horrified at the changes the world had undergone. Heroes, villains, rampant crime and alien invasions. The Earth was unrecognizable. There were people moving around the stars like it was second nature and others raising dead gods like the apocalypse was coming. Magic and ectoplasm was everywhere, rather than following the ley lines like they were supposed to.
Danny returned to Amity.
The fight with Pariah had taken them through space and time. Somewhere along the way, they had changed the course of history so badly that this now felt like an alien world.
How was he supposed to fix this?
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In the Watchtower, The Flash was wrapping up monitor duty while Impulse buzzed around him, a little more jittery than usual. The boy was talking a mile a minute, when alarms started blaring an alarming green. Flash had never seen this alarm before, and its crackling whine was grating on his ears.
Flash returned to the monitor, frantically clicking around to find the issue, but nothing was popping up. No major disasters, no invasions, no declarations of war. Nothing! What was causing the alarm?
Impulse swore and zipped to a window, pressing his face against it and staring down at Earth. “Fuck! It’s today isn’t it? I forgot!”
“What’s today?” Flash asked. He shot off a text to Batman, asking if it was an error. The big Bat said it wasn’t, and that he would be there soon.
“The arrival of Amity Park. I learned about this in school; the alarm always gives me headaches.”
Flash turned to his grandson, getting his attention. “Bart,” he stressed. “What are you talking about?”
Impulse barely glanced over his shoulder. Now that Flash was facing him, he could see a strong glow coming from Earth. “The first villain, first anti-villain, and the first hero,” he said anxiously. “They all protect the town of the original metas. They’re all here.”
“Here? Now??”
“Yeah? They weren’t before, but they are now. The first hero said there was time stuff involved, which was what inspired me to start practicing time travel in the first place.”
“I’m not following.”
“It’s okay. We should probably go welcome them before they tear apart Illinois, though. The history I remember says that some of them freaked and destroyed a chunk of the Midwest during a fight with each other.”
“WHAT?”
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“Eddie,” Robin says, eyes wide in a way that means trouble. “Edward Munson, I sincerely hope your last will and testament is in order, because you are going to completely and totally die when I tell you who just got hired at Scoops Ahoy.”
Eddie groans. “Don’t tell me Tammy Thompson is giving up on her Nashville dreams.”
“No, I hate you, shut up forever, you’ll never guess.” Robin pauses, then in a dramatic whisper she’s definitely picked up from Eddie himself, says: “Steve Harrington.”
“Jesus. No shit?”
“Yeah, I have to train him. Oh my god it’s the worst. He’s so bad at, like, everything.”
She shoves at his shoulder until he moves out of the doorway of the trailer, and flings herself backwards onto his couch. “Like! Okay! I showed up to my shift thinking it would be a completely normal day in which I would be bored out of my skull distributing frozen dairy products to the flotsam and jetsam of Hawkins, and Ned’s like, hey Robin, you’re showing the new guy the ropes today. And then that freaking jackass has the freaking nerve to say—” Her voice drops a full register. “Uhh, nice to meet you, I’m Steve. Nice to meet you! God!”
Eddie cringes sympathetically, sucking air between his teeth. There’s a special kind of indignity to being so completely and utterly below the radar of Hawkins High royalty, even former bearers of the crown. It’s not as if Hawkins is a big town; Eddie’s pretty sure he could pick every single person in the graduating classes of ‘84 and ‘85 out of a crowd. He’ll probably be able to do it for ‘86 too, though he’s trying not to think about it too hard. So he’ll be a senior again (again) this fall, whatever. It’s fine. It’s whatever.
Once in a while, he wastes some time really, really wishing he’d gotten to know Robin earlier in the year. Maybe even last year. For undying friendship reasons, yeah, but also because with her in his corner, he might’ve actually passed enough of his classes to fucking graduate on his second fucking try.
But he’d only actually met her, like actually met her for real instead of passing her in the hall sometimes, when he’d let himself get suckered into rejoining band. It wasn’t like he could’ve brought his guitar in, but he let it slip to Miss Genovese that he could read music and keep time, and they needed someone to wallop the bass drum, and he figured a little experience fucking around with percussion might be the one thing he could salvage from the year. He’d just…been so goddamn tired of feeling stuck, spinning his wheels. Music was something he could actually handle; something he could actually get better at. Something he could master. He's man enough to admit he needed a win.
The actual songs were all stuffy Holst and Sousa numbers, but they’d had some fun technical bits he spent his evenings hammering out for a couple weeks. And then right around the point when he’d gotten good enough to get bored and think about quitting like last time, it had somehow wound up that shooting the shit with the gangly weirdo in the trumpet section was one of the best parts of his day. Unfortunately, by the time they’d gotten close enough for her to start bullying him about homework and shit, it had been way too late to save his chance at walking that ‘85 stage with assholes like Steve fucking Harrington.
Not that Harrington would’ve even noticed, apparently.
“Anyway, the one singular saving grace about the entire situation is that he looks even dumber in the sailor costume than I do, so at least that will make me feel better about my life until he gets fired for burning down the ice cream freezer or something like that. Eddie, I cannot stress this enough: he is so bad at this job.”
Eddie very tactfully does not bring up the litany of screw-ups that Robin’s admitted to over the last couple weeks since she started at Scoops; he just says, “Buckley, it sounds to me like you might be in need of some quality relaxation time this fine evening. I can offer you a nice cold beer, some herbal refreshment…or a fiendishly weird new song to learn with an intro riff that'll make you cry.”
Robin, inveterate nerd of his heart, sits up immediately and chirps, “New song, please!” just like he knew she would. She’s going to run off and elope with his acoustic one of these days, and he’s not even mad about it.
“Coming right up, m’lady,” says Eddie. “I promise this entire Harrington situation will be over before you know it, and neither of us will ever have to think about him again.”
(ETA: First chapter of this fic has been edited/expanded and posted on AO3)
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Bill being forced to say the truth is such a fun concept though. I imagine Ford's the most likely candidate to hit Bill with a truth spell. Now he can expose Bill's nature once and for all! And find out what secret evil plans the demon has involving his nephew. 😠
Only it completely backfires because Bill acts the exact same as he usually does? After all, Bill usually doesn't have a reason to lie to the Pines family. Will he omit the truth? Totally! But rarely does he outright lie.
(But anyway, the plan backfires and Stan and Mabel are not convinced. "Yeah Bill's a jerk but he's not actually harmful", they say, with no knowledge of the countless atrocities he's committed.)
So Bill continues to act like his usual asshole self, completely unaware that he's under the influence of a truth spell. Until he sees his husband do something smart/cute/whatever. Before Bill even realizes, he's saying the sappiest, most gooey sedimental shit any demon has ever heard. Like "You're perfect, I love you so much". Completely unfiltered thoughts. The stuff he even lies to himself about. "You make me so happy. I'm so glad I met you".
The best part is that the situation is even worse (for Bill) the angrier he gets. "I hate you" comes out as "I love you". "You're the worst thing that ever happened to me" comes out as "The best thing". At one point, he accidentally says you're lucky I love you when he meant to be threatening. Everything is terrible. Dippers trying to figure out a cure and Bill can't help because he's to busy throwing up his organs. All the sedimental bullshit is making him sick.
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I watched Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire and… it really doesn’t deserve the torrent of hatred I’ve seen it receive online.
It’s not a perfect movie, sure, but I’d say it’s an honest one; I feel like I saw exactly what I was told I would get. Even though it doesn’t have the most original story, it’s not bad, and it already has a very dense (but easily digestible) lore, as well as many creative and original designs. Plus, this was only Part One, and they said a longer, R-rated version would also be released at some point, so we’ve only seen maybe one-third of the story…
Creating an entirely new fictional universe that, although it’s inspired by many others (and this was never hidden), isn’t part of an existing franchise with an established lore, is hard and ambitious, and the film was clearly made with care and passion, so I for one welcome the effort.
Rebel Moon has potential, and I want to see more of it. When Part 2, The Scargiver, releases, I will be there!
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