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ananxiousgenz · 20 days

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SONG FOR A CAGED LOVEBIRD: PART 14

yaaaay part 14!!! my favorite number!!!! i love this!!! apologies for the delay, school has been kicking my ass lately lol

okay kids, settle in: it's story time!!! this one is a longer one (around 2,000 words!!) which is part of why it took me a while lol

@smidgen-of-hotboy @ceaseless-watchers-special-girl @urjover @one-joe-spoopy @waters-and-the-wilde @demonic-panini @the-private-eye (@gwenlena? idk if you wanna read this? but i can start tagging you if you want?)

The first thing he became aware of was the smell. Coal dust and dry wood and faint fire smoke, like some kind of strange cologne. The air was thick and heavy with it and he struggled to breathe in. The second thing was the dull pain traveling through his skull. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, radiating out from a central point of the back of his skull.

His eye blinked open slowly and painfully to reveal several stacks of wooden crates, a few garbage cans, and the stone walls of some building. He didn’t know where he was.

Juno groaned, and tried to sit up and see more of his surroundings before a wave of dizziness hit him like a sledgehammer, and he fell backwards against the ground. He closed his eye again in the hopes the world might stop spinning long enough for him to be able to get up and escape this place.

Slowly, it all began to come back to him.

Peter’s deal and lack of voice. His insistence to save him. Slip telling him to leave. Juno refusing to go. Slip calling the executives. One of them whacking him on the back of the head. The world going dark.

He wasn’t sure what had happened after that, but he knew his body hurt like hell. After a few minutes, he figured the worst of the damage was probably a cracked rib or two that screamed whenever he tried to breathe normally. Everything else seemed to be a bruise or scrape. They must have beat the hell out of him and then dragged him to this alley.

He lay there for a few more minutes trying to work up the strength to stand, but couldn’t find it in him.

Suddenly, there were footsteps approaching, quiet and even. He couldn’t tell from where.

The workers? The executives? Slip himself?

A shot of adrenaline raced through his veins.

He pushed himself into a corner and grabbed the neck of a shattered bottle in defense. It might not have been his preferred weapon, but it was better than nothing.

The footsteps got closer.

Juno’s breathing was painful and shaky.

Even closer.

A figure rounded the corner. They spotted Juno, and raised their hands in defense.

“Whoaaa!! Hey, buddy, I don’t mean any harm! Man, if I had a nickel for every time I found someone in an alley who started pointing a weapon at me...”

Juno’s eye widened. It couldn’t be.

The figure stepped forward, and a little of the orange glow of the nearby metalworks fell on their face. “Hey, are you hurt? Do you need help at all?” they asked, crouching down to just above Juno’s level.

He knew this man’s face. He would know that voice even at the ends of the earth. Both had haunted his dreams for the last 20 years, and still echoed in his waking.

Benten.

His face floated across from Juno, smiling and slightly sheepish, but just exactly as Juno remembered him. Warm eyes, vaguely mischievous expression, gap-toothed smile, gentle hands, hair in neat braids knotted on top of his head. Juno felt his face going pale and the bottleneck slipping from his grip as this ghost looked at him in increasing concern. And suddenly a strange sort of fear began creeping over him.

“I’m dead, aren’t I? Oh gods, I’m dead. I died.”

The specter of Ben snorted and rolled its eyes. “Yeahhhh, sure, let’s go with that. Pretty much everyone is in Hadestown. Kind of comes with the territory, you know?”

Juno couldn’t say anything in response. His mouth had gone completely dry. He just kept staring, breathing hard and ragged. The bottle clinked to the hard ground and Ben’s brow furrowed in concern.

“Are you sure you don’t need…” Ben’s voice trailed off as he leaned a bit closer to Juno’s face.

His eyes went wider the longer he looked. Ben drew in a sharp breath.

“Oh gods. I don’t……. Juno?” he asked, so quietly Juno barely heard it over the distant clanging of pickaxes and the grinding of factory gears.

“Ben,” Juno choked out.

And then Ben catapulted himself into Juno’s arms, and they were both laughing and crying. Juno didn’t even mind the pain. He hadn’t felt this full of joy in a very long time. His brother was here again, solid and real and warm in his arms. And gods, if it didn’t make him feel like he could tear down this whole damn town with nothing but his own two hands.

“Juno!!! Super Steel!! It’s been so long, did you miss me? How in Hades did you get down here? Did you die? Or did you sneak in? If you did, it’s a little unlike you, because I was always better at getting into trouble and you were better at planning it but not really carrying through. OH, and you’ll never guess who I met! I ran into your HUSBAND. Your HUSBAND, man!! I can’t believe you got married and never told me!” Ben chattered away, eyes glittering with excitement and joy and a few tears he couldn’t stop from rolling down his face.

“Slow down, Ben, give me a second!” Juno hissed through his teeth as a spike of pain lanced his lungs.

“Oh, shit, I’m so sorry, are you okay?”

“About as good as I can be considering I think I just had the hell beat out of me. Could you help me up? Feels like I got hit by an angry toddler with a brick.”

Ben stood, wrapped his arm around Juno’s shoulders, and pulled him onto his feet before giving him a peculiar look that Juno was in a bit too much pain to decipher.

“What is it, Ben?”

“Nothing, it’s just-” he sighed, “It’s good to see you again. I missed you.”

A smile crept onto Juno’s face. “I missed you too. Loser.”

“Oh come on, I am NOT a loser!”

“Yes, you are. You just don’t want to admit it.”

“If I’m a loser then you’re…. Well, I’m not sure what you are, but at least I’ve never ended up bloody and bruised in a random alley somewhere.”

“You’re acting like you never took a punch when we were kids.”

“The only punches I ever took were from you, and you hit like a feather, Super Steel.”

“Hey, that’s not fair! I knocked Mick out once.”

“You and I both know Mick could get knocked out from tripping over his own shoelaces. That does not give you bragging rights.”

Juno stuck out his tongue in response and Ben recoiled, one hand pressed to his chest in mock offense and disdain.

“Really! I thought we were a little more grown up than that! If you keep behaving like that, I won’t be able to take you back to the hideout! You see, we only allow adults in there, and you, Super Steel, are not acting like an adult right now.”

Juno rolled his eye and sighed the deeply exasperated sigh only produced by interacting with one’s sibling. “Okay, fine. I apologize for sticking my tongue out at you.”

Ben raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“Aaaaaand for calling you a loser.”

“That’s more like it! I’ll take you back to see Vespa. She’ll be able to do something about those bruises and scrapes of yours. By the way, what happened to the eye? You lose a bet or something?”

—----------------------------------

It was slow going to get back to the hideout. Juno couldn’t walk too fast from a shooting pain in his shin and the probably cracked rib, but Ben was more than happy to spend the time talking and catching up on everything he missed. Juno told him about the bar he worked at, about Buddy and Jet and Rita, about the nasty winter that hadn’t let up for years, about his reason for the journey down here. In return, Ben told him about Hadestown, the work hours, the jobs, the forgetfulness, the cruelty of Slip and the executives.

“Why haven’t you fought back yet?” Juno asked, limping through the door to the hideout before gingerly lowering himself onto a mat on the floor.

Ben shot him a confused look. “What are you talking about, Super Steel?”

“Against the executives. Against Slip. This whole thing is so unfair. Why haven’t you guys tried to fight back yet?”

“Not sure.” A tall person with long white dreads who was seated at the table responded as they entered. “Maybe it’s because they own all of us?”

“Hey, Vespa? You here? We got someone who needs some patching up!” Ben called into the recesses of the house.

A moment or two later, a woman with short, spiky, neon green hair emerged, rubbing her eyes. “This better be good, Steel. I was in the middle of a nap,” she muttered, shooting daggers at Ben.

“It’s my brother. My twin. He’s got some scrapes and a couple nasty bruises you might wanna look at.”

The woman, Vespa, glanced between Ben and Juno before giving Ben a glare that could have singed wood. “You woke me up for some scrapes and bruises?”

Ben went completely silent and stared at the floor. The person opened their mouth to speak, but Juno beat them to it. “Yeah, he did. I think I got a broken rib, too.”

Vespa’s lazer-sharp gaze turned on him the second he began speaking. Juno stared right back. She looked him up and down for a moment before letting out a small huff and turning back down the dark hallway she came from. She returned shortly after, carrying a small bag filled with medical supplies that she threw down next to Juno.

“Is it true?” Juno asked, wincing occasionally as Vespa began to take a small antiseptic wipe to some of the more prominent scrapes.

“Is what true?” Ben countered, leaning against one wall.

“That Nureyev signed the contract. That there’s nothing I can do to save him.”

“Yup,” chirped Vespa. “We’re all fucked down here.”

“Vespa,” the person at the table said, shooting a warning glance in her direction. “Leave him be. He just lost his husband.”

Vespa sighed. “I know, I know, M’tendere, but if he’s going to be down here, he should at least know what he’s up against.”

“It’s just…. It’s not fair. It’s not fair. None of this is fair!”

“We know, Juno,” Ben sighed. “We also don’t think it’s fair that the world is like this, but that’s the way it is.”

There was silence for a minute as Juno chewed on his lip and Vespa finished bandaging one of the more major cuts.

“It shouldn’t be that way,” Juno finally whispered into the silence. “If I can’t save him, then what’s the point of me even being here? If none of you can ever work your way out of here, then what is the point of working at all?”

Ben, Vespa, and M’tendere exchanged a look. Juno continued staring at the floor, biting his tongue. This was just… so unfair. And he was so sick and tired of having to deal with it. He was slowly losing everything he had to Hadestown: his husband, his brother, his health, and now his ability to change anything for the better. It didn’t work on the surface, so why should it work down here?

But slowly, M’tendere began to nod. “He’s right, you know. Why should we even be working if we aren’t getting anything out of it?”

“You said it yourself! Because they own us,” Ben said as he threw his hands up to the ceiling.

“But there’s more of us than there are of them. Strength in numbers and all that. It isn’t right that a small group should tell everyone what is true and what is right. The many should decide that for themselves.” Vespa stood from where she had been crouching next to Juno on the floor.

“You could bring Hadestown to a standstill if you all just stopped working for a few days,” Juno said, easing himself up off the ground to stand next to Vespa. “Coal miners used to do it back on the surface to get better working conditions and pay. It could work here too.”

Ben was quiet for a minute, and Juno noticed that his face had gone suddenly thoughtful. “Huh. They couldn’t stop all of us, could they? If we partied around and had wine and flowers for a few days?”

A slow grin crept over Juno’s face. “No. No, they could only try.”

A matching grin appeared on Ben’s face. “Well, then. In that case, M’tendere, would you mind drafting some invitations? And Vespa, would you mind spreading them around? It seems we’ve got a party to plan.”

#this one isn't super angsty which is nice #but its still a bit painful lmao #as always #i hope y'all enjoy <3 #i love you guys!!!!!#the penumbra podcast #tpp #tpp hadestown au #hadestown #song for a caged lovebird

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thedreadvampy · 5 months

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The thing is I am definitely not happy or chill in the Immediate Sense lately but I am, big picture, so fucking happy with the person I am.

It's like. My brain was made by and for consistent trauma and since that trauma stopped about 5-7 years ago, it is incredible what the amount of resilience and cleverness and flexibility and thoughtfulness I developed to survive can do when it's not being all spent on surviving. like I had a hundred ton weight on me so I had to get REALLY STRONG to stay in the same place and not get 100% crushed, and when that weight came off I found I can use the strength it used to take to stand up and I can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I was talking to my mum the other day and she said, "you've got the 'fuck it' energy at 30 that most women don't find until their fifties at least" and I'm like yeah man. Imagine how unstoppable I'll be in 20 years.

#red said #i don't know that i can express this clearly but it's the most encouraging thing in my life #my mum's always been proud of me but just lately she seems to actually really admire me #like she's genuinely impressed. she thinks I've surpassed her. i don't necessarily agree but it's a really nice quiet joy.#anyway like this sounds super up myself and it kind of is.#but also it's part of realising just how heavy the weight I've been carrying around with me for 25 years was #like not to be ridiculous but i have realised again this week. that it isn't that everyone's been raped that much and doesn't talk about it #i just have been raped an Unusually Consistent Amount. i have spoken to a lot of people who have had much more horrifying things happen.#I'm not sure I've talked to more than a couple of people who've had a similar level of total consistency of abuse from all angles #and the one is not heavier or harder to bear that the other. but. i think i spent most of my life listening to people's awful experiences #and going ok well nothing i went through looked that bad so it's microtrauma #obviously microtraumas build up but still.#then the older i get and the more i have these conversations the more I notice that stuff which to me is a microtrauma #is a lot of people's defining trauma. and they're reacting appropriately which means i am SO SEVERELY UNDERREACTING #told my friend the other day about a time someone who i still like and respect was having sex with me when i paralocated my hip #and then just kept getting really annoyed with me for not being ready to have sex again while i was literally crying with pain #until i caved and just tried to find the last painful position #and my friend was like pal what the fuck that's horrific #and i was like i mean no that's normal I've had sex with like maybe 3 or 4 people in my life who i haven't had similar stuff with #like i am genuinely thrown when i am allowed to say no to sex and have it be the end of the conversation. and not end up having sex #out of guilt or out of physical coercion or through physical rape. and i have had sex with probably like 40 people at this stage?#and I'm not sure it's as many as 4 i haven't had that experience with tbh #so like. I'm slowly coming to terms with the idea #that i may have actually been doing a hell of a lot of heavy lifting.#like i developed a sense of self that can survive being constantly crushed and at this stage is fucking diamond.

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aureliobooks · 5 months

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also it’s been ages since i’ve checked my notifs here so if you run a writing/art blog and you’re a newer follower or we haven’t interacted yet, please feel free to reply here so i can start to meet people and re-familiarize myself with writeblr :’) honestly even if we’ve interacted before but it’s just been a while please reach out !! i miss all of you and it’s been far too long

#again. if u don’t know i’ve been on hiatus due to a series of health issues so i’ve mostly been writing for myself/for fun rather than-#-writing to share stuff #which has been nice in some regards but as always i miss the community here :’)#health is still up and down but i want to start writing original fiction again!#so! if you don’t know me! i’m iris and i’m always super happy to meet new people and interact <3 i’d love to hear about ur wips too!#maybe i’ll do an author reintro or something hmm #.txt

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beansprean · 2 years

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sometimes you get diagnosed with ADHD as an adult which finally makes your mom actually listen to what ADHD actually is and that she didn't cure it by making me do 100 jumping jacks as a kid when I got too hyper and then she realizes that she may have it too

And then you both realize that like 70% of the family probably also has adhd and that's why we are all Like That

#adhd #not art #like???? my moms side of the family were always weird to everyone but us #so informal and go with the flow and peppy but cycle through hobbies like toilet paper #never any drama bc we forget that we got mad and just get over it and were generally nice to people #we never learned to set boundaries with other people bc we all had invisible understood nd boundaries #and just didnt ask each other weird questions #like turns out we r just a super nd family???? but it makes sense???#my 2 cousins were diagnosed as kids but they were the only ones that was when adhd was starting to be understood as a childhood disability #but you only got diagnosed if u were getting bad grades etc so me and my sister got overlooked and everyone else was too old #but DEF my granny has combined like me and my mom has hyperactive type and probably my uncle as well #and my great aunt bipolar i wouldnt be surprised if she had comorbidities her daughter idk tho #great grandparents hard to say but i wouldn't be surprised and time will tell with cousins kids #would not be surprised to see some autism in there im sure my sis on the spectrum and i may be too but with adhd its hard to differentiate #anyway this is a v personal post but its kinda crazy to look back and be like huh #thats why the fam dynamic is so different from everyone elses #we dont talk to each other for years but relationships dont deteriorate in our heads so nbd #now my dads side....my dad does have a lot of adhd symptoms as well as his dad #plus Alzheimers runs thru there which has a slight predilection for adhd anyway #why would a bunch of intelligent chatty anxious and kind people choose to live in the middle of nowhere and have silly hobbies #why neurodivergency my friend #ANYWAY the culture shock of moving away from that as a child and my parents remarrying neurotypicals who didnt understand the dynamics #dunno if it was the southern thing or the nt thing but turns out the normal way i always interacted with my parents #was seen by others as deeply disrepectful mean teenager nonsense that should be culled #shout out to the nd kids with nd parents who just spoke to each other like adults and played with each other like kids #this is TOO MANY TAGS thats how u know the vyvanse kicked in #personal

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marinsawakening · 1 month

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Also one last thing: I played the game in Dutch and could've sworn Riju mentioned (during the cutscene where you give her the Thunder Helm) that she has worked hard to gain the respect of the Gerudo as their chief. However, I just rewatched the cutscene in English, and that line doesn't seem to be there? I wonder if this is a translation difference between the Dutch and English, or if I just misremembered. Both are very possible.

Either which way I think it fits with Rima, the old woman in the outskirts of Gerudo Town, mentioning that Riju is a wonderful chief despite her age and that after all this (the Vah Naboris quest), Buliara has to see Riju differently. Riju's diary also mentions that after an accident involving Vah Naboris, Buliara didn't leave her side, and Buliara is consistently shown to be overprotective of Riju in dialogue. In addition, Riju's diary also states that Buliara was the one to tell her that her mother was dead.

All this together seem to point towards Buliara being overprotective of Riju, and Riju chafing under this because she is, of course, a child. Not just a child: a child with leadership duties. Riju wants to be seen and respected as an adult as any child does, amplified by her adult role in society. This is at odds with other people's view on her, which is that of a child. Buliara especially seems to regard her health and safety as her personal duty; she might've been close to Riju's mother and feel a duty towards her, too. Buliara, therefore, leans too hard in the other direction and is overprotective.

The truth is somewhere in the middle of course, with Riju being a kid with kid interests (plushies, most notably), but also a very capable chief deserving of respect. Riju's frustration at being treated like a child is understandable, but treating her as an adult would lead to much bigger problems in the long run. On the other hand, Buliara's worry is also understandable, but she needs to respect Riju's abilities and let go. I think Riju's character does a good job showing a child in an adult role and the issues this would logically cause, while still showing them as competent and capable and deserving of agency. It's a balance many kids games (including other Zelda games) strike well, and I'm happy to see it in BOTW.

[STILL HAS NOT PLAYED TEARS OF THE KINGDOM DISCLAIMER]

#my posts #botw #loz #botw riju #riju #[holding Riju] I just think she's neat #it's always nice to see the balance struck between 'this is a Child in a role they shouldn't have an it causes Issues'#and 'this may be a child but they're super competent and capable and cool and ppl need to let them be'#it's a very kids media thing to do. which is why the other zelda games also do it constantly #it's nice to see it in botw bc with their weight of duty theme they very easily could've justified a strictly negative portrayal #but that would've been significantly less interesting and also less relatable to the kids who play this game

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mobbothetrue · 5 months

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Spotify prompt! Knuckles and tails, an 19 :)

Oh hoho! You managed to land FightSong by EVE (<- YouTube link), a song that by all rights shoulda been #2 (<- I refuse to pay Spotify money).

Hmm…. It’s been a while since I’ve done anything with Super Sonic Speed, but I always did intend to write follow-ups…

.•.•.•.

The city is unbelievably loud. They’re in what Sonic had called a shopping district, and it’s apparently very popular. Knuckles would kind of like to go home, a lot, actually, but Tails is flirting from one shop to another and he doesn’t have it in him to shut the kid down. Sonic is somewhere on the periphery of their little group— he and Tails had bonded, thick as thieves, and Knuckles— well, he tolerated the guy.

Tails gasps like he’s seeing the sun rise for the first time, excited enough that he’s lifting off the ground. Knuckles ambles over, grabs him by the ankle, and pulls him back down. He’s looking at some sort of… thing. Knuckles can’t make heads or tails of it, but it’s definitely saying something to Tails.

Hmm. He is, at least, familiar with the idea of shops. Chao liked to set them up, sometimes, selling fruit or handmade crafts for rings, but Knuckles has no idea if their idea of currency and everyone else’s aligns. Would the shopkeep accept a fruit? Most chao did. It isn’t like rings are a problem, so…

Knuckles turns, seeking out Sonic in the crowd. There he is— stiff as anything, glancing frantically back and forth between Knuckles and some other hedgehog, a pink one. One of his friends, maybe? They look irritated, maybe not. Knuckles steps away from Tails, invites himself into their conversation.

“and you just RAN OFF—“ the hedgehog is shouting. Sonic cracks his mouth open, a faint wheeze escaping.

“Hey,” Knuckles says.

“—do you have ANY IDEA how WORRIED I was—“

This looks like a battle Sonic is better off fighting on his own. Still, Knuckles needs his question answered. “Hey,” he repeats, slightly louder.

“—I mean, I knew you were alright because my cards said so, but—“

“Hey Knuckles,” Sonic manages to crack out, “this is Amy.”

Amy tilts her head at him, and then gives him a sharp, discerning once-over. “Are you one of his other friends?” She asks.

“Yeah, sure,” Knuckles says, and then “do rings work as currency down here?”

She blinks at him, as if this is a weird thing to ask. “Yes?” She says.

“Okay,” Knuckles says, nodding, “try not to scare him too bad.”

Any lingering confusion evaporates, and she whirls around to find Sonic trying to sneak away. “AGAIN!” she shouts, full of conviction, and Knuckles makes his way back to where he left Tails. He isn’t pressed up against the glass anymore, so Knuckles steps into the store. Yeah, there he is. Hovering— literally— over the same display.

Knuckles takes a moment to properly observe, rooting around for the terms Tails would use, in an attempt to ensure he gets the right thing. There’s a looping track, and a few other gadgets on the sides. A switch, one of them looks like, and some barricade, and a few blinking lights. On the track itself is a… sideways cylinder, set on wheels, connected to a few boxes, puffing out smoke— or steam, maybe. Tails is absorbed enough in watching it chug along that he doesn’t even realize Knuckles is standing right next to him. Knuckles’ll just have to make sure he comes up for air, occasionally.

He casts about the rest of the store, vaguely lost. There are a lot of displays, and a lot of colourful boxes. Knuckles picks up one, flips it over, and realizes swiftly he is out of his depth. He brings the box over to Tails, handing it to him. Tails holds onto it for a full few seconds, watching with bated breath as the cylinder switches tracks, before he looks down. His fur all along his spine puffs up, and he turns to look at Knuckles so fast he has to wonder if Sonic hasn’t started to rub off on him in more ways than one. That’s the right box, for sure.

“Really?” Tails asks, voice breathy with excitement, and Knuckles ruffles his fur instinctually.

“‘Course.”

Maybe the shopping district isn’t that bad.

#eggthew #prompt fill #askbox #uhhh so. I kind of barely followed fightsong at all I CAN EXPLAIN #went off the visuals instead of the lyrics. two people running around in city. ooh I could do knuckles protecting tails from Eggman in some #kind of egg city! ah hang on there’s the eggperial city arc in idw and I haven’t read that yet. so I’m not confident in portraying it. hmmm #I could do a Different egg city… man Knuckles and Tails. what a great pair. I really enjoyed writing them in super sonic speed. hey! I could #do super sonic speed’s Knuckles’s first time in a city! maybe he gets kind of freaked out? escape from the city haha #well tails would be familiar with cities. and sonic would be there ofc but I’ll shuffle him off to the side so he doesn’t hog the spotlight #I could do tails looking at a shop! yeah! and knuckles needs to ask how currency works but sonic is… busy? hmm. oh! a city!!!! amy lives in #a city!! she runs into sonic! which keeps him from coming back over with knuckles. I always did mean to write her reunion with sonic.#that’ll be nice to do. alright. perfect. it’s all working out. get to the final few lines. think ‘hey how did I end up with this anyway.’#pulse of adrenaline as my brain goes OH YEAH FIGHTSONG. ach.#I’m happy w this though :)#knuckles: I Tolerate sonic. at best.#sonic: hey I am in a vaguely uncomfortable situation #knuckles *rolling up metaphorical sleeves*: do I need to kick ass #Amy making a mental note: sonic apparently befriending a space alien okay okay cool #they meet up for ice cream. knuckles is inflicted with curse of immediate brainfreeze. tails is So Excited about his new model train set #within a week he mods it to A) be strong enough to pull the Master Emerald and B) be armed.

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