#Alternatively i wanted to name this 'malfunctioning machine' but anyone can probably figure out that one if they wanted. Lol | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

shadowofthelamp · 5 years

Note

Can I get a basic run down of each of your au’s? It’s really hard to keep track and I wanna understand what people are talking about

*cracks knuckles* Alright, let’s do this. I’ll probably just link this in my sidebar at this point, because these are getting built up pretty rapidfire and if you aren’t on tumblr as much as I am you’re pretty liable to miss something.

Now with tag links, going chronologically so you can catch up if you want to! Some of them have a lot of posts, though, just as a warning.

-Time AU: The original. Twix is accidentally sent back in time- why is still a bit fuzzy but I think it involves the Voot malfunctioning when a time machine is installed. She runs into Dib when rummaging around in the basement lab in his house for parts, and lets it slip that she’s his daughter from the future. Her skin is just not-green enough to slip past his radar, and a DNA text confirms that she is in fact related to him, but her lips are sealed about who her other parent is.

She needs to break into Zim’s base to get the necessary tools to finish fixing the Voot to go back home, and Dib assumes she wants to expose Zim like she does, so she has to keep on his good side to get what she needs. It’s weird to say the least, seeing her parents fighting and Dib as a kid- especially since Zim looks basically the same.

After she finally fixes the Voot, it starts jumping through alternate dimensions before she finally makes it home, and she meets several alternate versions of herself.

The tag needs to be cleaned up on this one- it was the first au and has scattered posts of the others still in it but it’s going to take a while to edit down to the individual ones, fair warning.

-Tallest AU: Zim is “co-Tallest” with Tak, and Dib is a rebel fighter trying to take down the empire- sort of a bounty hunter on the side too. Twix is created during a fight when Zim tries to rip Dib’s throat out with his teeth, as you do. Zim is yanked out of public view while pregnant- can’t let the Empire know one of the Tallests has a defect that allows him to reproduce naturally. When he comes back, Twix is declared an experiment of his to create an heir with alien DNA to help her be taller, stronger, and more resilient. She’s kind of a spoiled brat in this one, and has absolutely no idea who Dib is.

When she’s about 12, Dib as a bounty hunter was enlisted to kidnap her in an attempt to rile up Zim and get rid of his heir in one fell swoops, having no idea that she’s his daughter. Eventually, that’s discovered, and she slowly learns what life is like for everyone who isn’t her, while Dib learns to be a parent and care for her instead of having to just rely on himself all the time. Things are pretty tense at first, though.

Eventually, after Zim gets her back, she’s injured during a fight and Zim and Dib make a reluctant truce while she heals, eventually becoming sort of ‘rivals with benefits’- Zim won’t kill him if he’s captured, and Dib won’t take headshots. Dib also gets a collar so he can walk around the Massive without somebody sniping his head off, although he’s very grumpy about this.

Eventually, Dib manages to convince Zim that he’s nothing more than a mascot for the empire, there to blow shit up to show their power. (Tak is the real leader, Zim doesn’t really have the power he thinks he does, and Tak was brought in as co-Tallest to do most of the real ruling and give an air of competence, with the Control Brains doing the rest.) This takes ages, and involves Zim being so deep in denial he literally shoots Dib in the leg to get him to shut up, but it needles at him until he accepts it. Needless to say, pisses him off. They run off together, something Tak’s actually pretty happy about because she figures he’ll just die without the protection being a Tallest gives him. Twix comes with them, and start causing problems for the Empire wherever they can.

Dib gets a robot arm at one point, we haven’t 100% decided on how, and they end up having a second kid, a boy named Kit. (Kit Kat. Thank the discord for that one.)

-WLOD AU: Based on the alternate future in Dib’s Wonderful Life of Doom. Dib is the villain in this one- Twix was made when Zim attempted to escape captivity and bit Dib in the process. She’s kind of a nervous, timid wreck, and Zim is incredibly protective of her. She doesn’t see the world outside of the lab until main!Twix stumbles across this world and helps break her and Zim out, bringing them to her reality and asking Membrane to help her ‘cousins’. They end up settled somewhere else. (She ends up good friends with Moth!Twix.)

The running joke with this one is if the other Dibs meet this guy they just beat the crap out of him.

When Twix eventually dies of health complications from being experimented on, Zim pretty much snaps. He goes back to his home dimension and burns down everything even remotely related to Earth and Dib and ends up conquering the Empire, his grief giving him laser focus and allowing him to work past his defects. He goes on pretty much on a multi-decade rampage, twice as ruthless as anyone else and blowing up planets with ease. One day, though, while he’s with the ground troops he sees a scared child who was orphaned by his attacks and sort of snaps back to himself. He ends up adopting them, and several others in an attempt to atone for himself. He trains them up, fully expecting one of them to end up killing him when they find out he was the one that orphaned them, but when they find out about Twix they tend to just leave over killing him.

He ends up dying near her grave of illness/old age.

-Human AU: This one’s gotten revamped. The old one is after the line, to explain the old fanart in that tag. (I… never really liked this one as much as the others because it didn’t feel Zim-like to me and Dib was barely a presence- and he was barely himself too.)

Honestly this one is still a bit of a joke, but Zim’s got a more mad-scientist edge to him, primarily with strange toys, furbies in particular. He makes lots of them and their house is overrun- Twix has no idea it isn’t normal. He enjoys making people squirm with his creations and ends up having a bit of a rivalry with Swap Zim.

______

Old version: Zim and Dib were both sort of academic rivals at school, but ended up paired together for a science pair project and became friends. They’re roommates at college and begin dating, and Twix just comes from a regular old broken condom, oops. Zim was kind of a party animal but cuts back for her sake. His water actually breaks during an important exam but he insists on finishing it, despite Dib’s blood pressure going up about 500%. Zim’s a Bio major, I haven’t really settled on Dib yet. Zim ends up working at Membrane Labs, though.

Zim’s also a big fan of musical theater, and gets roped into subbing in as Billy Flynn on the campus production of Chicago while four months pregnant. Gir is his younger brother and currently in high school.

-Irken AU: This one’s set a bit earlier in the timeline, when Zim was still working at the labs for military research. (See the canceled episode The Trial.) He met Dib there, and at one point they ended up locked in for a whole weekend on accident. At one point they got into a fight, one thing led to another, and Zim ended up pregnant. He only found out when he started getting sick and went to the hospital. The problem? That’s a defect that hasn’t happened in a long time- he’s whisked to the Control Brains, labeled defective in both mind and body, and sent off to Foodcourtia so no one has to deal with him.

When Dib finds out, he steals a ship and goes to rescue him. Zim is completely miserable, exhausted, overworked, and all around pissed this is happening. He lashes out at Dib for doing this to him before completely collapsing since his body hasn’t gotten a chance to rest in too long, and his instincts tell him that Dib is safe because he’s the other parent. Gir is a malfunctioning food service drone that snuck aboard the ship. They have to figure out what’s going on because this kind of thing hasn’t happened in centuries.

Dib was initially only interested in studying Zim because of the rarity of natural-born smeets, but as time goes on they end up getting closer, especially because Zim gets clingy as time goes on. There are two endings to this one- either they keep wandering around space, or they end up on Earth since it’s uncharted and no one will bug them there. Twix comes from an egg and has three siblings (possibly more) in this one!

-Pilot AU: Related to the Time AU- while jumping around, she gets stuck in the pilot universe. She very much doesn’t like it, especially since Dib starts stalking her instead. When he finds out she’s his daughter, he gets even more obsessive about how and why she came back, and she has to escape him to keep going home.

-Adoption AU: This is the angstfest one kicked off by a particular anon- Zim has a miscarriage, but at some point afterwards when Twix is jumping through the multiverse, she runs into them. After realizing what happened, she finds a version of herself that lost both of her parents and brings her to meet the ones that never had her, and they’re all happy.

-Zimvoid AU: Twix lands in the Zimvoid from the few most recent comics. Not a lot of plot to this one, it’s just fun to imagine. The Zims meeting after Twix is born is under PZA Au, and the Dibs meeting is ‘Meet me in the dibpit’ which is the best tag out of all of these lmao

-Species Swap AU: Dib is, similar to in the irken au, there to study local flora and find uses for them. Gaz is the invader, sent here for her catastrophic body count on every other mission she’s had. She finds out Earth has good games and is just ‘eh, whatever’ and basically puts the mission on hold, letting Dib start stalking the one human that truly interests him- Zim. He’s almost irken-like, and clearly incredibly intelligent- and destructive!

I made a whole plot explanation for this one here.

Dib is actually the one to have her in this au. It’s also a running joke and I’m heavily considering making it canon that this Zim is the one that actually succeeds in taking over the world.

-Mothman AU: Dib is an actual mothman, and so is his family. Variation on this one: One has irken Zim, one has human Zim. Other Dibs find this version of Dib hot. Twix is raised in the woods and her only real friends are her parents, Gir, and Tulip. (Keef’s adopted daughter.)

In the irken au, Zim is actually accepted relatively fast by Membrane who thinks he’s just a strange, stunted moth. After having Twix he ends up growing wings and neck fluff because mothmen are actually a very distant cousin of irkens that diverged millions of years ago, and carrying Dib’s kid kickstarted the process. He also dies for like two minutes because giving birth to an egg a third of your size really sucks. (He’s fine, once Dib got him to the recharging chamber he woke back up when his Pak reactivated him, he was just really low on charge after a birth lasting like two days.)

In the human au, he’s not so lucky- Dib has to keep his relationship a secret, and Membrane only finds out when he sees Zim, already pregnant. Dib gets into a big fight with him because humans killed his mom and Membrane is pissed he’d get into a relationship with one. Things do end up working out eventually, once Twix is born Membrane is fascinated by her, but tensions are still pretty high for a while. Earlier in this version, Zim actually found out he was pregnant when he gets accidentally shot by someone who was aiming at Dib and had to go to the hospital and they took a pregnancy test before doing the x-ray. (In all aus where Zim is human, including swap, he’s a trans guy, and this one is set in the 1970′s/80′s. He ran away to live in the woods for a reason.)

-SU AU: Steven Universe AU! This one’s covering most of the plot of Steven Universe up to this point, so it got long. Link here. (For the aesthetic, think more Gravity Falls and late over early SU: Deep woods and dark colors.)

-Capture AU: A sort of flip of the WLOD au. Zim wins and keeps Dib prisoner, although he enjoys riling him up so Dib is much more of a firecracker than WLOD Zim is. Zim gets the itching feeling he’s missing something and uses a blood sample from Dib to get himself pregnant, but he realizes he can’t raise the kid alone without killing her (and plays it off as making Dib help with something he’s made it clear he hates) so he lets Dib out but on a very tight leash. This one is definitely on the darker end.

-Scandal AU: Zim is Tallest, Dib is an irken scientist. They ‘grew up’ together but Zim shot up and forgot about Dib because- well, his memory’s canonically pretty garbage and besides he often misremembers things anyway. Dib is hauled in front of him for causing problems at the labs like letting the specimens free because he hates his coworkers, and they just kept shoving him at successively more important people because he managed to keep slipping away before being fully punished and it ends up getting all the way to the Tallest.

Dib gets pissy at Zim because he’s expecting to get thrown out the airlock or whatever, before realizing just how terrible of an idea that is and that Zim could do something a lot worse. Mostly he’s just mad that Zim left him behind, but Zim, who only has faint inklings of Dib being familiar, decides to keep him around on basically a whim.

Things evolve from there, with Zim doting over his new ‘toy’ who treats him like an equal (which he didn’t realize he wanted, because duh, he’s the Tallest, why would he want to be anything other than shallowly worshipped?) while Dib has to walk the VERY careful tightrope of staying alive by not pissing Zim off while also not rolling over completely and betraying himself. (And that might lose Zim’s interest as well.) Things get even messier when oops, there’s eggs now.

-Treasure Planet AU: What it says on the tin, an au based off the movie Treasure Planet! Plot summary here, AU mostly belongs to @64bit-trash and @yeehawimscared.

-Dibbrane AU: Dib turns out to be a much better clone of his father and doesn’t realize that Zim is an alien. Zim ends up getting attatched to him because he takes him seriously as a fellow scientist and genuinely enjoys his company, and eventually they get married- all without Dib finding out what he really is. Twix ends up more like show-Dib, determined to prove to the world that there’s a world hidden underneath their own, and Zim ends up her ‘alien rival’ in order to train her. She doesn’t realize she’s half-alien… yet. Fuller synopsis here.

-Amnesia AU: Zim was a personal pet project of Tallest Miyuki’s, and treated him as a son, planning to raise him to succeed her, taking down the heightarchy in the process. She ends up assassinated by Red and Purple in an attempt to get enough power to laze around for the rest of their lives, and Zim is blamed for it. A lot of irkens are bitter and jealous for the attention he got, especially for someone so short, so it’s easy enough to do.

While imprisoned, he tore up his Pak in an attempt to get rid of the grief and trauma of seeing his mother dead and ended up more defective, having mostly forgotten who he was before. The timeline ‘syncs up’ with iz show canon. He crashes OID2 and gets sent to Earth, and over the years enters a relationship with Dib and gets pregnant. When that’s discovered, he gets pulled back and his memory is wiped again, and when the baby is born, she’s taken away to see if they can shape her into a soldier.

Zim is used for more tests and Skoodge tries to help him, and ‘Brid’ is shuffled between career tracts before being sent out with the soldiers while still 11- practically a smeet. She meets Dib, who’s been looking for both Zim and his lost child. She promises to take him to Zim, but is going to try and bring him as a new species of alien to her superiors to get brownie points because she’s treated kind of like shit by the other trainees for being such a freak. (She always wears a helmet to cover her nose and hair.)

Eventually their paths cross as they get arrested and thrown into a cell near Zim’s, but Zim doesn’t realize he’s even got a daughter, much less this one, so there’s a while to figure things out.

All this time, Miyuki uploaded herself before her death into a side control brain that only Skoodge knows, and they stumble across her, and she helps fill in the gaps.

Aaaaaand I’ll go back and add more to this post if we get more, if I forgot one feel free to tell me.

#iz #aip #Anonymous #asks

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moonblooch · 5 years

Link

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning : No Archive Warnings Apply

Category: Gen

Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series)

Characters: Fjord (Critical Role), Jester Lavorre, Caleb Widogast, Nott (Critical Role), Mollymauk Tealeaf, Yasha (Critical Role), Beauregard (Critical Role)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, based loosely around the time of the sequel trilogy, dubious usage of star wars canon slang, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

Language: English

Fjord, Jester and Beau crash land on the planet of Trostenwald and get a whole crew for the price of one mechanic.

“So Fjord, what exactly are we looking for?” Jester asked.

They were stood in the doorway of a small cantina on Trostenwald, surveying the scattered patrons. The place was fairly empty, though the breakfast rush would likely end that soon; if they could get in and out before that happened.

“Well Jester, I was thinking we need someone to repair our ship.”

She nodded, eyes cast down. “I’m really, really sorry about the ship Fjord.”

The image of the ground rushing up to meet them flashed through Fjord’s mind.

“It’s fine Jess, I’ve seen worse landings than that. Besides, I’m sure Beau’ll have everything upright by the time we’re back.”

They walked to the counter, where a harried looking human was wiping down every surface with all of the enthusiasm of someone about to finish her shift. She paused, looking up as they approached.

“How can I help you dears? What can I get you?”

“Just some rations for now I’m afraid.” Fjord replied, swinging himself onto a stool. “And some information about the area if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course, I’ll sort your food first; you look like you’ve had a hell of a jump to get here.”

Once more Fjord recalled his scream as they shot through the atmosphere.

“You could certainly say that. Speaking of,” he leaded forward, “you wouldn’t happen to know any decent mechanics would you?”

“Rough landing huh? We get plenty of those round here.” She said sliding a ration cube to each of them. “That’ll be five credits love.”

Fjord handed held out a credit chip and she scanned it with a handheld which was probably older than she was.

“As for your mechanic, well, you didn’t hear it from me,” she whispered, leaning in, “but that man in the corner might be your best shot. He’s an offworlder, not guild affiliated or anything; that’s why I’m not telling you this, but I’ve heard that he’s good and doesn’t ask questions. People have been singing his praises since he got here.”

Fjord followed her minute gesture to the corner-booth, where a scruffy looking man was hunched over a mug of caf. He had a lolth-cat sat on the bench next to him which seemed to be doing its best to stick its head into his mug, but had yet so succeed. He appeared to be conversing with someone, out of view from their angle.

“Are you sure?” Jester asked, a little louder than would have been ideal. “He looks like a slythmonger or something.”

“Sure as those tails on your head miss; he fixed the caf-dispenser just this morning. It used to make this awful screeching noise. I don’t know what you’ve got that needs fixing but I’m pretty sure I heard him talking to an Azumel about an old Hunter last night and he seemed to know his stuff.”

Fjord found himself nodding.

“Do you know what his rate is?”

She gave a light shrug.

“He just asked for two decent breakfasts when he fixed the caf machine for me, you’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“Maybe we could take some food, you know, to get him to talk to us?” Jester suggested. Turning back to the human she asked, “Hey, do you have any feen?”

“I’m afraid not miss, but I’ve got a sack of mallow powder out back that I’ve been trying to shift for ages if you’re after something sweet. It’s yours for ten credits.”

“Done!” Jester replied, brandishing her credit chip. Her freshly forged credit chip, if Fjord recognised it. He held his breath as the scanner ran over it, but seemed to detect nothing amiss.

“Alright then miss, I’ll just go get that for you. If anyone comes in could you let them know I won’t be long?”

At Jester’s nod she slipped through a door behind the bar. Fjord placed a light hand on Jester’s shoulder.

“I’m going to go talk to this guy, alright? Come over when you’ve got the mallow powder.”

Jester nodded again, sending him off with a wave. As Fjord approached, the man at the table seemed to tense up, curling in on himself with each step that Fjord took towards him.

“Excuse me,” Fjord began when he finally drew level with the booth, “d’you mind if I join you for a bit?”

“There are other tables.” Came a voice from the hunched figure sitting across from the man and his lolth-cat. They were small, smaller than most children even, although their voice fairly clearly demonstrated that this was not the case, and had a hood pulled over their face.

“Einfach da, Nott.” The man said, before turning to Fjord. “What is it you were wanting to talk about?”

“Ah, I apologise if I’m interrupting anything. I’m looking for a mechanic and I heard you might be able to help with that.”

“Maybe so, what is it that you need fixing?”

“Well, uh, my crew and I just landed and on our way back to realspace we encountered a few technical issues. I was hoping you’d maybe be able to take a look at them.”

“I would certainly be able to look at it, aber I imagine you would want for me to fix it if there is something wrong.” The man stroked his chin. “I would not be unwilling to do this, but you will understand if I am widerwillig to do this for a person who has not yet introduced themselves.”

“Oh, I’m sorry about that,” Fjord held a hand out, “my name’s –”

“Fjord!” Jester called, staggering over to the booth almost entirely hidden behind the colossal sack of mallow powder she was holding. “Look at how much I got us! Do you think we can fit this in the kitchen?”

She set the sack down on the table with an audible thump.

“Oh,” she exclaimed, peering around the sack, “I really like your cat! Can I pet him? What’s he called? Oh, and what’s your name?”

A smile settled across the man’s features.

“You shouldn’t have asked him that.” The hunched figure on the other side of the table groused. “He barely talks about anything except that cat as it is.”

“Hush, you.” The man replied, scratching the lolth-cat behind its ears and turning to face Jester. “His name is Frumpkin, and you can pet him as long as he allows it. My name is Caleb Widogast.”

He offered a hand to Jester, and that was when Fjord noticed that his arms were wrapped almost entirely in medical tape. A few of the pieces were trailing, having come unstuck, and it seemed to be stained in several places, though it was impossible to tell if these were from injuries or the sort of fluids which occurred in machinery.

“I’m Jester.” Jester replied, taking his hand with both of hers. “This is Fjord. Can you please help us with our ship?”

He seemed to consider for a moment.

“I will ansehen it but if you would like for me to fix it then I shall need something in return.”

“What was that word?” Jester asked. “I don’t think I’ve heard it before, ans-han?”

“Oh.”

Caleb reached into one of the many pockets on his jacket, this one close to the lapel, and pulled out a tiny four-sided pyramid. Each side sported several flickering lights, and a seam along one edge was cracked open just widely enough to reveal the circuits inside. Caleb blew into this, then examined it for a moment. Seeming satisfied he returned it to its correct pocket.

“Malfunctioning translator, sorry.” He said, attention once more on Jester. “It is an old one, I had to do a lot of the fine-tuning myself, so it can sort of, er, glitch I think is the best word, if I speak too fast or put stress on a word. I do speak Basic, but the dialect I learned to speak is unfortunately rather specific, a translator saves a lot of explaining you know?”

“Oh, I understand.” Jester replied, tapping her headband. “The translator in here makes my voice a little strange too sometimes. And there are some words it just doesn’t get, you know?”

“Absolutely, idioms are a gottsverdamnt nightmare with this thing. As is cursing. What I was trying to say was that I would take a look at your ship and that we could take it from there, yes?”

“Well sure.” Fjord replied. “What’s your price?”

“That would depend on what needs fixing, but my friend and I,” Caleb gestured between himself and Nott, “need safe transport off this planet. It must be discreet. Can you provide that?”

“We can certainly try, where are you reckoning on going?”

“Anywhere in the outer rim.” Nott answered. “Further out than here at least, if not all the way out.”

“We can talk about the specifics when we are in a more private setting.” Caleb added. “But first, I would like to see this ship of yours.”

He drained the last of his caf and stood, still remarkably hunched over (though this was presumably not helped by the fact that the lolth-cat draped itself across his shoulders). Nott scrambled her way onto the table in order to help him strap some sort of pack to his back, allowing Fjord to get a closer look at her.

As widely travelled as he liked to assume that he was, Fjord had to admit that he had never seen anyone who looked quite like she did. Her hooded robe seemed to be covering her almost entirely, but what slivers of skin were visible were green (lighter than his own, but still very much green). Each hand appeared to have four fingers, unless she was wearing unusual gloves, and the lower half of her face was covered by a mask. If Fjord was pushed to guess, he would have said that it was a breath mask, but it was not visibly attached to any kind of tank. Over the top of this mask peered two amber eyes, constantly darting about the room as if she was expecting something to jump out at any second.

Once Nott had secured the final clasp, Caleb gathered up a second bag and slid out of the booth, offering Nott a hand to guide her down from the table.

“Well,” he said, looking to Fjord, “lead on.”

Jester kept up a constant stream of chatter on their way back to the ship, holding the sack of mallow powder in one arm and excitedly gesturing with the other. She stopped when Nott held up a hand.

“We’re being followed.” She hissed, turning slowly to face the direction they had just come from. Fjord followed her gaze, seeing two figures behind them and moving closer with purpose. He felt his hand twitch, almost involuntarily, but managed to keep it still. There was no need for that sort of scene yet.

Of the two figures approaching them, only one could have passed for human. Perhaps they were human, but something about their proportions, the slightly lumbering way that they were moving, suggested otherwise. The other was most likely chiss, though a lot closer to purple than average. They had been talking to their taller companion, but stopped abruptly when they noticed that Fjord was looking at them.

“Well hello there.” They called, slight accent betraying the use of a translator, as they strolled towards their group. “Not to be rude, but I believe that we overheard that you might be heading off planet soon. Got room for two more?”

Fjord fought the urge to close his hand again.

“We can pay.” The larger of the two said, not caring to elaborate.

“And we’re handy with most any weapon you can think up, if you need that sort of thing.” The chiss said, a smirk catching the corners of their mouth. “The name’s Mollymauk by the way, probably should have led with that. Mollymauk Tealeaf, Molly to my friends, and the delightful lady beside me is Yasha.”

Yasha gave them a nod.

“I’m Jester, this is Fjord,” Jester answered before Fjord had a chance to come up with a halfway decent alias, “and this is Caleb and Nott.”

“Why do you need off-world so badly?” Nott asked. “We can’t take someone who’s got troopers after them.”

“I think I’ll decide who I allow on my ship Nott.” Fjord interjected. “But is there anything we oughta know about before we consider your request?”

“We came here with the circus a few days ago, and we need off-world because one of the other performers seemed to think that the locals wouldn’t notice if he ate someone.” Yasha said, in a voice flatter than the statement truly deserved.

“You were travelling with cannibals?” Caleb asked, slowly starting to walk again. Fjord followed suit, noticing Jester and Nott do the same out of the corner of his eye.

Mollymauk shrugged as Yasha and they followed.

“A cannibal, and, in Kylre’s defence, I don’t think it technically counts as cannibalism. It’s not as if the victim was the same species.”

“If you guys were with the circus, does that mean you can do anything cool?” Jester asked, presumably not overly bothered by what was definitely cannibalism, species be doshed.

“Yasha can scream like a fleft-wauf, the resemblance is uncanny. You ever want to see an entire bar of people shit themselves in the space of three seconds? She’s the one for the job.”

Yasha rolled her eyes, which Fjord could now see were a peculiar shade of pink.

“He can tell fortunes.” She said. “I think that’s more impressive.”

“Ooh, how does that work?” Jester asked.

“I attune myself to the Force and reach into the future of the person I’m reading for.” Molly answered.

“That is not how the Force works.” Caleb muttered.

“Oh but it is.” Molly grinned, argument clearly already prepared. “I would know; my ancestors were a secret sect of the Jedi order, I’ve even got the sabres to prove it.”

He swept his coat back to reveal two cylindrical objects, which might have been lightsabres but which Fjord could not see well enough to tell before Nott shot forward to tug the coat closed again.

“Put those away! Are you trying to get us killed?” she hissed, looking about them frantically. “Honestly, you kids these days think just because that di’kut Vessar took out Darth Thordak with one of those things it’s like order sixty six never happened.”

“Folks, could we maybe talk about the particulars when we get back to the ship.” Fjord whispered. “Ain’t exactly a safe conversation topic when we’re out in the open like this; not on a planet this close to the Interior.”

Molly raised his hands in surrender.

“Of course, my apologies.”

They made their way back to the ship without much further trouble, and if Fjord was paying more attention to every Stormtrooper they passed then none of the others remarked on it. What they did remark on, once it came into view, was The Mistake.

The Mistake was a Far*Reach IV PQR, which had been modded to high hell at some point in its younger days. Maker only knew what half the mods had been for; it wasn’t as if any of them worked any more, and nor did most of the guns, hence the name.

“That’s your ship?” Mollymauk asked, eyebrows fast approaching his hairline. “I’ve never seen anything so obviously stolen in my life.”

“We didn’t steal it.” Jester protested.

“Then clearly whoever sold you that thing stole from you.” Caleb shot back. “That thing flies?”

Jester waggled her hand and made an “ehhh” noise.

“Like I said, we encountered a few, uh, technical difficulties on the way down.” Fjord said. “It certainly used to fly.”

“Sweet doshing Maker grant me strength.” Caleb muttered. “You are lucky that I am very familiar with the work of the Loronar Corporation, most mechanics would run screaming from that thing.”

“I still might.” Nott groused.

“I think that this is more of a job for Frumpkin mein freund.”

Before Fjord had had the chance to consider what engineering qualifications a lolth-cat might have, the closest door of The Mistake was flung open, revealing Beau and an alarmingly thick haze of smoke. Her usually black robe was soaked with a splatter of some kind of fluid which seemed to be slowly bleaching the fabric. Her face seemed to have been spared from it, although she did sport the indented outline of goggles around her eyes.

“Might want to leave that for a few ticks.” She called out to them between coughs. “I think something in the engine room just blew up.”

“Good thing we bought a mechanic back with us then.” Fjord replied, wrinkling his nose as the smoke reached them. At this, Beau appeared to notice the group amassed behind him.

“What, all four of them?”

“Just the one with the lolth-cat. One's a package deal with the mechanic and the others want a ride out of here and say that they’ll pay.”

Beau squinted at Caleb as she walked up to them, tilting her head slightly to the side. She leaned into his space, sniffing, even though Fjord knew that humans couldn’t actually use smell to determine anything (and even if they were able to she wouldn’t have been able to smell anything over the smell of the fuel on her clothes). Caleb shrank back, looking down at her with what might have been alarm.

“You sure?” she asked.

“The waitress at the cantina said that he fixed her caf machine.” Jester chirped. “Also she sold us this huge bag of mallow powder.”

“Caf machine is very different from an engine.” Beau’s eyes narrowed even further.

Frumpkin bristled and Caleb’s face suddenly arranged itself into something sterner and he leaned forward once more, inches away from Beau’s face.

“You are not wrong, but the fact that I am able to fix engines qualifies me to fix something much simpler. Whether or not I can fix your engine specifically is something that we will not know until I can look at it, but I would advise that if you want to smell of anything apart from tar-fuel for the rest of your life that you stop leering at me and let me get to work.”

Beau looked down at her clothes.

“Ah, dosh! Hey Jessie, did you see any sort of cleaning station around here?”

“I think there might have been some showers at the cantina, do you want me show you?” Jester replied, handing the mallow powder to Mollymauk, who staggered under the weight for a moment before passing the sack to Yasha.

“Yeah, that’d be great. Can someone bring me some spare clothes?”

“I’ll send one of the others along in a little while, you go get cleaned up.” Fjord assured her.

“Wizard, thanks.” Turning to Caleb she asked, “What was your name again?”

“Caleb. Caleb Widogast.”

“Right, Caleb-Caleb, good to know. You’re gonna need these.” She pulled her goggles off her head and handed them to him. “The light in the engine room has been busted almost as long as we’ve had the thing. Break them and I kill you.”

“Understood.” Caleb replied. “Have you not been able to replace the light? It is a simple fix.”

“Fjord is the only one tall enough, and he won’t go in the engine room because he thinks it’s haunted.” Jester answered him as they turned to leave.

Fjord could see the corners of Nott’s eyes crinkle in what was presumably mirth and did his best to quell the fear that was beginning to establish itself in the pit of his stomach.

“I’d have been less inclined to come to that conclusion if somebody hadn’t hidden in the dark and jumped out at me screaming, Beau.” He called after their retreating backs. Beau flipped him off over her shoulder and he couldn’t help sighing.

“Right, Yasha, Molly. You want to earn passage out of here? You can start by cleaning up the trail of fuel Beau will have left through the ship.” He turned to Caleb and Nott. “I’ll show you where the engine room is, and if you can fix whatever’s in there then you can take the engineer’s quarters for the time you’re with us. Might have to clear it out a bit but we’ll worry about that when we’ve fixed it.”

Caleb gestured to the ship with his spare hand.

“Lead the way.”

Notes: This was based very loosely on this post but veered wildly off in a different direction to the point where I wasn't sure that gifting it would make sense. But if either of the contributors to said post are reading this, please feel free to consider it as such.

I do not own any of the characters or concepts which appear within this fic, I'm sure that I don't need to tell any of you this but please support the actual properties that inspired it (Critical Role and Star Wars).The title is from Weird Al Yankovic's "The Saga Begins", which I also don't own, and I'm sure that you'll already be familiar with, but if not go check that out as well.

#critical role #critical role campaign two #critical role campaign 2 #cr #Fjord #Jester Lavorre #Caleb Widogast #Nott the Brave #Mollymauk Tealeaf #Yasha #My fic #fanfic

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