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grailfinders · 4 years

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Fate and Phantasms #65: Francis Drake

Today on Fate and Phantasms, we’re making The Woman who Brought Down the Sun, Sir Francis Drake! Everything Drake does, she goes all in: big guns, bigger cannons, and the biggest treasures you ever seen.

Check out the complete breakdown below the cut, or the summary over here!

Race and Background

You’re a Human, but beating Poseidon isn’t something most people can do so we’ll call you a variant one. This nets you +1 to Dexterity and Charisma, proficiency in Sleight of “Hand” for stashing away the grail, and the Lucky feat. You probably want people to think it was skill, but only you know for sure. You’re also a Pirate, giving you proficiency in Athletics, Perception, Navigator’s tools, and Water vehicles.

Stats

Make sure your Charisma is your highest stat; your personality cuts you a bigger path than your prow does. Next is Dexterity, you’re good with guns, and the occasional theft. Third is Constitution, voyages around the world are not for the faint of heart. After that is Wisdom, you don’t fall for other people’s bullshit. Your Intelligence is a bit low, but we needed other things more, and we’re dumping Strength. In reality all servants would have 20s in every stat, but we’re not using strength too much anyway, so it’s not a huge issue.

Class Levels

1. Rogue 1: First level rogues get proficiency in Dexterity and Intelligence saves, as well as four rogue skills; Deception and Intimidation will help you talk your way into the sweetest treasure maps, Stealth will help you nab the ones you can’t, and Acrobatics will help you avoid getting shot when stealth goes out the window.

When you start as a rogue, you gain Expertise in two skills, doubling your proficiency bonuses in Athletics and Intimidation. You also learn Thieves’ Cant, letting you talk with other pirates with no fear of being overheard. (It also works on landlubbing thieves, if you really have to.) Finally, you can perform a Sneak Attack on creatures once per turn if you have advantage or there’s an ally within 5′ of your target, adding 1d6 to the damage roll.

To make a sneak attack, you need a ranged or finesse weapon. Your main weapons are your Hand Crossbows, but I’d keep a dagger or two on hand just in case.

2. Rogue 2: Your Cunning Action lets you dash, disengage, or hide as a bonus action.

3. Rogue 3: Third level rogues see their sneak attack increase to 2d6, and they get their archetype. The Swashbuckler makes you a true pirate, with Fancy Footwork and Rakish Audacity. The former prevents attacks of opportunity from creatures you make melee attacks against. The latter adds your charisma to your initiative, and you can use your sneak attack if you’re fighting a creature in melee range one on one. That’s not amazing right now, since we’re mostly using ranged weapons, but hang on one level.

4. Rogue 4: Use your first Ability Score Improvement to become a Crossbow Expert. You can ignore the loading aspect of crossbows, use them in melee range without disadvantage, and attack with an offhand crossbow as a bonus action if you use your action to attack with a one-handed weapon. Despite pulling a trigger being way less effort than swinging a sword, you can’t effectively dual-wield crossbows without this feat. Regardless, Rakish Audacity is based on distance, not the weapon you’re using, so now nothing is safe from your sneak attacks.

5. Sorcerer 1: If you’re going to lead the Wild Hunt you’ll need to have a little storm in you, and Storm Sorcerer is the perfect way to go about it. When you become a sorcerer, you learn Spells that use your Charisma to cast. You also become a Wind Speaker, meaning you know Primordial and its dialects. You also learn Tempestuous Magic, letting you spend your bonus action to move 10′ before or after casting a spell without provoking attacks of opportunity. Technically this is flying, but it’s most effective to just move yourself horizontally and pretend you’re walking.

You learn a bunch of spells at this level, and most of the ones you’ll learn can be reflavored to cannons pretty easily. For cantrips, grab Acid Splash to throw your drink into someone’s face, Thunderclap for a small cannon, Light for a torch, Booming Blade to help hold someone at gunpoint.

For your spells proper, Thunderwave is a bigger cannon, and Magic Missile can be some grapeshot.

6. Sorcerer 2: Second level sorcerers become a Font of Magic, gaining a number of sorcery points equal to your sorcerer level. Right now they can only be used for an extra spell slot, but you’ll get more uses. Eventually.

For your spell, Catapult lets you launch anything suitably heavy at someone’s head. Dangerous and hilarious.

7. Rogue 5: Back in your main class, you learn the Uncanny Dodge, letting you react to halve the damage from a single attack. Your sneak attack become 3d6.

8. Rogue 6: Use your second round of Expertise to double up on Deception and Perception to lie your way out of (and into) more situations, and possibly avoid them entirely by seeing them coming.

9. Rogue 7: Seventh level rogues get Evasion, meaning when you need to roll dexterity saves to take half damage, you now take 0 damage on a success and half damage on a failure. Rogues don’t have great HP as it is, and we’re cutting into sorcerer. Be thankful for every bit of damage mitigation you can have. Your sneak attack becomes 4d6.

10. Rogue 8: Use your second ASI to round up your Dexterity for a better AC and more accurate shots, as well as your Wisdom for better saves.

11. Sorcerer 3: Third level sorcerers learn two Metamagic options to flavor their spells. With Empowered Spell, you can spend one sorcery point to reroll a number of damage dice on a spell, up to your charisma modifier, to keep those cannons hot. Twinned Spell takes the spell’s level sorcery points, but you can target two different creatures with the same spell. There’s a lot you can do on your turn; it pays to be efficient.

Speaking of spells, here’s one you can’t twin. Shatter gives you an even bigger cannon blast that can even deal property damage!

12. Sorcerer 4: According to our flavor, your spells are actually other people firing cannons, so it stands to reason they should be able to do that even if your hands are full. The War Caster feat we’re grabbing with this level’s ASI makes that dream a reality- you also get advantage on concentration saves and can use spells as attacks of opportunity. Sadly, it has to only target the one creature, so most of your spell list won’t help.

Speaking of spells that won’t help, Friends will help you open doors with diplomacy, and Knock will help you open doors with a giant cannon. Is there anything cannons can’t do?

13. Sorcerer 5: Fifth level sorcerers get third level spells, and the classic Fireball will give you one spicy cannon.

14. Sorcerer 6: At this level you get another round of goodies from being the leader of the wild hunt. You get the Heart of the Storm, making you resistant to thunder and lightning damage, and you erupt when dealing those damage types through spells. When casting those spells, creatures you choose within 10′ of you take half your sorcerer level in lightning or thunder damage, no saves necessary. You also become a Storm Guide, letting you make subtle changes to the weather around you. If it’s raining, you can use an action to stop the rain in a 20′ radius around you to keep the tinder dry, and end the effect as a bonus action. If it’s windy, you can use your bonus action each turn to change the direction of the wind within 100′ of you. I shouldn’t have to tell you this, but being able to control the wind on a ship is pretty goddamn useful.

Speaking of pretty goddamn useful, that’s exactly what Haste is. It doubles a willing creature’s speed, adds 2 to their ac, gives them advantage on dexterity saves, and they get another action each turn. This lasts up to a minute, but when it ends the affected creature can’t move or act for one turn. You’ve probably got heavier damage dealers that could use this, but don’t be afraid to step in yourself. You don’t really get any multiattacks, so if you want to fan that hammer, here’s how you do it.

15. Sorcerer 7: Seventh level sorcerers should get fourth level spells, but to be honest I don’t really like them. So let’s go back and grab Lightning Bolt. It’s another massive cannon, and this one triggers your Heart of the Storm too.

16. Rogue 9: Ninth level rogues see their sneak attack grow to 5d6, and swashbucklers gain Panache. You can use your action to contest your persuasion versus another creature’s insight. If they fail, one of two things happen. If they’re hostile, they have disadvantage when attacking non-you creatures, and they can’t make attacks of opportunity against you for up to a minute, or until your duel is interrupted. If they aren’t, they’re charmed for up to a minute or until you harm them, treating you as a friendly acquaintance. And friends show their friends their treasure maps, right?

17. Rogue 10: Another ASI. We didn’t actually take persuasion as a proficiency, so we’ll just have to make our Charisma better to make up for it. This also has the side effect of beefing up our spell saves. Whoops.

18. Rogue 11: Your sneak attack is now 6d6, and you have Reliable Talent. When making checks in skills you’re proficient with, you’ll always roll at least a 10. This means your best skills have a minimum check of 20 (or 26 if you’ve got expertise), which is pretty good.

19. Rogue 12: Another ASI. Bump up your Dexterity to make more skills your best skills, improve your AC, and become more accurate and deadly with your crossbows.

20. Rogue 13: Cap off the build with one last bump to sneak attack, maxing out at 7d6. You also get one last feature from being a swashbuckler; the Elegant Maneuver. You can use a bonus action during your turn to get advantage on your next Acrobatics or Athletics check made in the same turn. Honestly getting this after Reliable Talent makes it pretty much useless, and you’ve got a lot of other things to spend your bonus action doing. But hey, if you’re trying to jump from a sinking ship, it’s not gonna hurt to take extra precautions.

Pros:

You’re very mobile, with multiple ways to move around the battlefield without getting stabbed, and even some limited flight. This will help you move around to tempting targets and take them out with a quick sneak attack bolt.

You also excel at ranged damage, with both powerful crossbow bolts and spells for a lethal combination at a distance.

You’ve got good social skills, and a couple other out-of-combat bonuses too. Being able to control a ship at will is a niche skill, but when you need it it’ll probably be very handy.

Cons:

You don’t have a lot of HP, barely breaking the 100 point mark. This means taking even a light scratch will put you in Power Word Kill range. Besides that, your hyper-aggressive build won’t last long if you end up surrounded.

You also have a ton of stuff to do with your bonus actions. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it will make your turns pretty difficult. You can: attack, hide, dash, disengage, cast a spell, fly, change the wind, or get advantage on a skill check. And that decision is something you’ll have to make each turn. Being the captain is complicated.

Mixing martial and magic classes gives you a lot more flexibility, but you’re not as strong as if you focused. Neither ability is maxed, and your sneak attacks and spells are weaker than a pure rogue or sorcerer.

That being said, you’re not here for power building, you’re here to blow open a vault and take what’s inside. This build should be able to do that more than easily enough. Just make sure to keep Blackbeard away from the loot.

Next up: Double Trouble

#Fate Grand Order #D&D 5e #Francis Drake #FGO #Fate and Phantasms

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welcometophu · 4 years

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Into the Split: Revolution 4

Twinned Book 3: Into the Split

Revolution 4

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There is very little sleep in the end. Nikolai naps in the early part of the evening, curled together with Seth in their bed, wrapped around each other. Nikita and Heather sleep at the same time, across the end of the same bed, Nikita’s fingers resting on Nikolai’s ankle. They awaken just before midnight to the sound of an alarm, and Heather and Seth begin the long process of trying to get Pawel to rest.

Nikolai heads back downstairs to work with Nikita and Carolyn and the other Mages who have arrived since he went to nap.

Seth and Heather manage to get Pawel to nap for two hours at the most. When he returns to the kitchen, wavering on his feet, Mac hands him a coffee and says gently, “You’re not driving to Haverhill. Conserve your energy. You’re going to need it.”

Pawel blinks at the gathered group. “Is Rory here?”

Rory raises his hand where he sits next to Kit at the table. He has one hand on Kit’s knee beneath the table as Kit hunches over, drawing quickly. “I know,” he says. “I think I’m as ready as I can be.”

“Everyone has transportation,” Mac says. “We have an entire caravan readied, and we know when the ritual will start. We’ve chosen locations around the world—there are hundreds of them, no more than two hours apart in a web everywhere we can get to. There are places we can’t handle—over the water, or in more remote reaches—but we’ve done our best. Every single place selected has a history with the Dreamscape either through Emergent Shadowwalkers or through Dreamwalkers. To the best of our ability to coordinate information through Del, every single location exists in some manner in both worlds. We can’t say anything for sure about the third world.”

A moment’s quiet as they all think about that: the world that has already fallen.

It takes Mac’s quiet efficiency to get them all fed, cleaned, dressed, and out the door. She doesn’t let anyone pause to think about what they’re doing. No one packs a bag that isn’t related to the Ritual. “We’ll be back tonight,” she says when Pawel brings it up.

He starts to say something else and she gets a hand up and over his mouth. “No. We will be back tonight,” she says firmly. “You’ll call Conor and tell him that the world has been saved. We’ll have pizza and beer to celebrate, and you’ll start panicking about how there are only two weeks left of class and you somehow still have to write a final for a class you’ve barely taught not to mention grading final projects. You might also want to spend some time thinking about great gifts to buy for your TAs once we’re out of this hell; they deserve them. Oh, and either give Carolyn and Kit a great grade for saving the world, or an extension on their final project for their independent study.”

Pawel wraps his fingers around Mac’s wrist, carefully moving her hand. “Do you have a preferred rank, or should we just address you as captain of this sinking ship?”

“Not sinking, not captain, and I’m just the most organized person here. It’s nice getting to plan an op where no one’s going to die.” Mac holds up both hands this time before anyone can say a word. “This is an op where no one is going to die,” she repeats slowly. “Pizza and beer to celebrate when we’re done. Now. Let’s go heal the Split.”

Nikolai lets himself doze on the way to Haverhill. He’s tucked into the back seat of a minivan, squeezed between Nate and Seth. The drone of conversation between Alaric, Chris, Dax, and Nate about running and football eases his mind. It’s nice to hear something that for them, at least, is normal. By the time he wakes, the van is bouncing along the long road that leads to the big house of the Clan community.

They don’t stop at the house, driving as far as they can toward the Berman house before they have to get out and walk. Mac disappears with Pawel; the two are sitting on the cracked step of the house when Nikolai and the others finally arrive.

It takes time to gather, and Nikolai notes significant faces that are missing. The Mage from the New Hampshire Clan is missing, along with Thorne, and several Mages from the Burlington community. Valentine, however, is there, along with Rory.

Valentine stands near Alia, fiddling with her phone. “Elijah talked David into letting him help today.” She sounds resigned as she scrolls through something. “He headed to the site in Maine last night and they’ve promised me they’ll be here as soon as they can after everything’s done. They have more people than we do, but from what we understand, that site was the location of a significant Emergence of more than a dozen Shadowwalkers all at once, in the early days after the original Emergence. Elijah says it feels icky.”

Valentine’s mouth twists, frowning as she surveys the space around the Berman house. “I think I understand what he means.”

“Until recently, no one disturbed this place, aside from teenagers trying to prove they weren’t afraid of ghosts,” Alia says dryly. “You can blame the claw marks on my husband, but the aura is what was left after Mattie Emerged. We had no idea at the time; we blamed her family’s disappearance on magic.”

Valentine glances sideways at Alia. “I get the feeling that a lot of things we’ve blamed on each other over the years may have been due to misunderstandings,” she says quietly.

Alaric makes a low growling sound, and Corbin wraps an arm around him dragging him down and in rub his cheek against Alaric’s head. The noise shifts to something disgruntled as Alaric tries to wrestle himself free.

“We are on a timeframe here,” Pawel says, voice tight. “If you wouldn’t mind getting started.”

They form a loose circle, with Nikolai, Nikita, Carolyn, Del, Mattie, and Chelsea at the center. Chelsea curls in on herself, a slender column of darkness that Nikolai can feel standing next to him, as if she matches the air around them in ways that everyone else doesn’t. The other Mages circle around them, with Rory at a point where he can both touch Kit and the rest of the circle, and lay his hands on Carolyn’s shoulders at the same time.

“This will work,” Rory mutters. It sounds as if he’s trying to convince himself, and that’s not exactly comforting.

Carolyn looks down at the sketch she holds in her hands, bright and fresh and new, drawn just the day before by Kit. Del’s meadow reflects subtle changes that Nikolai has seen since he first met her.

His Talent isn’t the same as Carolyn’s, but he still looks at that image as a focus as he reaches inside for that place where his abilities lie. He leans back into Seth’s anchoring touch, feeling the real world in Seth’s fingertips and the earth below his feet, even while the Dreamscape tickles over his skin. Nikolai inhales, and on the exhale, he lets it grow, lets the Dreaming come closer to him.

“Now,” Pawel whispers, and the sound echoes around them. Nikolai can see the one word in the air, a soft silvered blue that infuses with light.

Everything feels unreal and all too real all at once. Nikolai slowly turns toward the house and slips his hand into Seth’s. He focuses on the way their fingers curl together as the group moves toward the door that lies open and waiting.

He hopes this is working as planned but they are mid-Ritual and while Nikolai has no idea what the Mages are actually doing, he knows they don’t have time to check their phones. They have to trust that all over the world at this exact moment, groups of Dreamwalkers approach their own liminal spaces in an attempt to enter the Dreamscape together.

They will do this together.

The way ahead is made up of dual images: the scratched and scraped door that hangs open, and a brightly colored front door that is cracked open and waiting. Nikolai crosses the threshold after Carolyn, and stops inside the door as he realizes that his hand is empty.

“Seth?” he turns around to look behind, and there’s Nikita without Heather. Nikolai takes a step toward her, but Nikita’s expression hardens with resolve and she puts her hands on his shoulders.

“They couldn’t come with us here,” she says quietly. “You knew that might happen.” She nudges and he turns to walk with her.

It seems natural to take her hand, to anchor them with each other, their dual selves from different worlds. Nikita squeezes his hand as they stand in the living room.

“This was my home,” Mattie says, turning as she looks around. “As it was then, and still existing in the Dreaming I suppose, and as it is now.”

“This is where we came to find you,” Carolyn agrees. She glances at Del before crossing her arms, shoulders hunched. “I’d really hoped that with Del, we’d be able to do what we did then, and bring the others with us.”

“There are too many of them,” Del says. She offers a slight shrug of her shoulders before she moves to the nearest window, looking through what seems to be bright glass with freshly painted sills, and cracked and dirty glass all at once. “Or maybe there are too many of us, and the Dreamscape wants us for itself. Who knows.”

Nikita and Nikolai. Carolyn. Del. Mattie. And the darkness that is Chelsea, hovering near a corner as if she might melt into it.

She looks uncomfortable in the light.

“We have to assume that it went like this all over the world,” Carolyn says.

“Worlds,” Nikita corrects, emphasizing the plural.

“Worlds,” Carolyn agrees.

“My meadow is outside,” Del comments. She goes to open the window, making a disappointed sound as the sash doesn’t lift. “Door it is.” She skips lightly across the floor, pausing when she reaches the door that lies open, light spilling in around it. “There are a lot of us,” she whispers. “I can feel them. The Dreamscape can barely contain us all, and wants to spill out. But the darkness is pushing in. It’s almost too late.”

She pulls the door wide, and for just a moment, the light is blinding enough that Nikolai brings his free hand up to shade his eyes. The smell of flowers is overwhelming; Nikita sneezes three times, her entire body shaking.

“Let’s go,” Carolyn says, and follows Del through the door.

A lot of us was putting it mildly. The Dreamwalkers stand in knots—groups of anywhere from just a pair to a dozen or more. They are all ages, all races. And there are more of them than Nikolai can count.

Spreading out from the meadow in all directions are places. Nikolai sees the Berman place behind him now, the Benford home like a an image over it. He turns back, wanting to know if he could walk into the Benford home from here, but stops after a step. Not without Seth.

He sees a pond in one direction, a cliff seemingly jutting out of nowhere in another. He swears one is Stonehenge, which makes a kind of sense when he thinks about it, and that may be the largest gathering of Dreamwalkers as well. Some of the liminal places he feels as if he recognizes dimly, other landmarks or legendary locations like Stonehenge. Others are strangely simple, like the truck stop with a flashing neon sign, or the Berman/Benford house behind him. Or the big tree that Grace stands beneath.

Nikolai exhales, and tries to wrap his head around the entire world being here in Del’s meadow. Two worlds, condensed down to entry points in a microcosm that they’ve brought together.

It feels too big and too small all at once.

And it still begs the question: what next?

“There are more people here than in our entire community.”

Nikolai recognizes Brett from his world, his eyes wide as he looks around the meadow.

“We have come together, across two worlds, and we are many,” Amahle says with a gentle smile. “We are well met, and we will persevere.”

“Why is she here?” Grace is angry, jabbing a finger at where Chelsea stands behind Mattie, as if she could somehow become her shadow in the brightness.

“I want to help,” Chelsea whispers.

“The darkness is already crowding in and you bring more?” Grace’s throws their hands wide, and Nikolai follows the gesture. He can see it then, the cracks around every place they’ve brought together. The darkness that threatens to split them all apart. It moves, undulating and alive, and Nikolai imagines he can see faces and hands that grasp and grab at their homes.

He imagines he can see it crumbling.

“Can’t you feel it?” Grace asks.

Nikolai can. It crawls over his skin, pricking at him and pulling at him. It wants to tear him apart, or shove him back to reality. It wants to claim him and suck him dry.

Chelsea takes a step back. “I want to help,” she whispers again. “I don’t want to be part of them. I’m not here to—”

“We have two choices,” Carolyn shouts, and the slow murmur that was building falls silent, cutting the argument short. “We have Dreamwalkers and Travelers both here, and we need to do one of two things before we run out of time.”

Ji-eun and Amahle step forward from their groups. Nikita tugs and Nikolai joins her at Carolyn’s side. They gather slowly, the people he has come to know best from their Dreamwalker network. Even Grace grudgingly joins them, a scowl still twisting their face as they sigh dramatically.

In the distance, Nikolai sees something on the edge of the meadow. Flickering in and out, a third version of some of their selected places. The house that looms in the place of the Benford and Berman homes is larger, a third floor added on, the exterior dark with paint and fallen into disrepair.

“Our third is here,” he murmurs. “Barely, but there’s still something of it out there.”

“It feels hopeless,” Nikita whispers back. “Like it’s waiting for us to fall, too.”

“We have two choices,” Carolyn repeats. Her voice is lower now, but it still carries across the meadow and Nikolai wonders if that’s Del’s doing somehow. Del doesn’t seem to be paying any attention, dancing happily in the sun that streams down in the center of her meadow. At least the people who ring around her will keep her from wandering off.

“We can either pull our two worlds together, squeezing out the Split,” Carolyn says. “Or we can push our worlds apart completely. If we do that, it’s possible the Split will become too big and overwhelm us, or it’ll lose hold.”

“You think we should tie our worlds together,” Ji-eun says.

“What would happen to us? Would we merge into one world? That seems like a bad idea,” Brett says, glancing around the group. “Either you’ll be overrun with Shadows, or we’ll end up overpopulated. We don’t have the same number of people left that you do, but there are still a lot of us. And for the ones who are bedrock, or who have analogs, that could get messy.”

Nikolai tries to imagine a world with two of Alia and he doesn’t think anyone’s ready for that.

“Pawel thinks we might have been one world, once upon a time, and we diverged through whatever small events happened that made us different,” Carolyn says. Nikolai remembers this discussion, vaguely, and it feels right when she says it.

“We’re too different,” he says. “Your world and mine are completely different places, and even though there are similarities I don’t think they can be considered the same anymore. I think that if we pull them closer together, we wouldn’t merge. I’m not even sure anything would change, other than making it so that there’s no room for the Split.”

If there’s no Split lying between the worlds, how would they get home?

That’s not a thought for now.

“No Split means no Shadowwalkers,” Ji-eun says thoughtfully. “Yes, this is our best solution.”

“No Split means no walking death destroying the population of my home.” Brett is emphatic. “I’m in.”

“But what if—?” Grace cuts off when everyone looks at them. They cross their arms, cheeks pulled in as if they are biting their tongue. “Fine,” they say sharply. “But if we cause a cataclysm because we try to squish two realities into one—”

“Three,” Del calls out cheerily.

“I’ve read enough science fiction and comics to know this is a bad idea!” Grace mutters loudly.

“I think it’s worth it,” Nikolai says. He tries to smile when Carolyn offers one of her own, but it feels weak. “There’s a risk, yes, but the reward is higher. We need to end this, not just somehow put a bandage on it, or possibly make it worse.”

“This could still be making it worse,” Grace points out.

“How will we do this?” Amahle asks, and it’s a good question. It’s not like they have any experience in doing something like this.

“We all came from our liminal spaces.” Carolyn gestures at the overlapping places around them. “I’m not experienced on the Dreaming side of things, but if we can bring our reflections—the two or three versions of our spaces—into alignment, then maybe that’ll do it.”

“But what about the Shadowwalkers and the Split? How do we make sure to push them away?” Brett asks.

Nikita makes a small noise, her hand tightening around Nikolai’s abruptly. “That thing. That light thing you do.”

Nikolai’s mouth opens, uncertain. “When I bring the Dreamscape out?” he asks. He needs Seth for that. He needs grounding. He needs to be outside the Dreamscape because that’s what he’s bringing into the real world when he does it. “It’s kind of a weapon, yes, but we’re in the Dreamscape, Nikita. We’re already here.”

“But it gets rid of Shadows,” she says simply. “It pushes them away. And if we push them and the Split away at the same time, they’ll be gone.”

It sounds too easy.

“That might work,” Carolyn agrees.

Other than that it’s too easy to use a trick he’s been doing forever in order to survive, and expect that to save the world, Nikolai can’t think of a reason to object. It means they have to take time, while Nikolai explains to hundreds of Dreamwalkers how to pull on the Dreamscape. How to form it up into small bundles of exploding light, and push it in a certain direction. It’s different here, like it’s right there, wherever he wants it, and directing it out of the Dream seems harder.

It fills him with power, his skin vibrating with this direction connection to his Talent. Around the circle, Dreamwalkers sparkle, their Talent visible to the naked eye as they slowly take control.

Del sighs. “I have a really bad feeling about what this means for my meadow.” She crouches down, running her fingers through the grass. “Just in case,” she whispers. “Goodbye.”

Something flickers in the edge of Nikolai’s vision. He turns to look at the Berman house; it’s wreathed in Shadows, the darkness licking around the edges of it, encroaching on the meadow. “I don’t think we have a lot of time,” he says.

“They’re probably drawn to the amount of power we have in this one place,” Carolyn explains. “Which we can use to our advantage. If they’re here, we can get rid of them. Everyone go back to your own space and start building whatever it is you need to build. Dreamwalkers, if you can reach out to each other, and feel what you’re doing, try to coordinate the timing.”

The Benford house is dark, dim beyond the image of the Berman place. Nikolai hopes that Seth is still back in Haverhill waiting for him, that time is passing differently here than there and that he isn’t panicking.

He feels like if it were him, he’d be panicking.

“Del,” Nikita calls.

Del stays in the center of the meadow, her hands out, butterflies flapping around her, rising into the sky as she slowly spins.

“Guess it’s just us,” Nikita says. She holds out both of her hands, and Nikolai takes them. Carolyn stands nearby, and Mattie and Chelsea watch. Nikolai is aware of other groups of Dreamwalkers doing the same things, and that at some places, there are two groups, as if there’s one from Nikita’s world and one from his own.

It gives him hope that this will be enough. That they can be enough.

“This is going to hurt,” Chelsea murmurs.

That may be the only thing Nikolai regrets. Whatever they are now, the Shadowwalkers were people once. Pawel loved Chelsea and if this works, chances are he’ll never see her again.

Chances are Nikolai will never go home again, too.

He exhales roughly, closing his eyes and extending his senses into the Dreamscape. He can sink into it easily, feeling it rise around him. Nikita’s world and his own, and that faint hint of something else beyond. He feels those and the Shadows, and he clings to them, pulling them in.

The darkness tries to slip between, tries to pull back, and it’s a tug of war. The thing is, it’s a war he knows how to win. All he has to do is twist the dreaming into bright, sparkling particles of unreality, and push those into the darkness.

It builds under his skin, until he feels himself glowing with the effort of keeping it contained.

“Now!” someone shouts.

It’s such a relief to let it go. To open his eyes to the bright diamonds that flash in the sky, that light up the entire Dreamscape until it fills his vision with bright, white light, overloading his mind, painful and sharp like daggers in his skull.

Everything goes incredibly, intensely, bright.

And just as abruptly, it all goes very, very dark.

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keelywolfe · 6 years

Text

FIC: Keep Your Pants On

Summary: Watching the ‘wacky skeleton’ antics is a time-honored tradition for Monsters. There are a few subtle differences now that they are on the surface, but hey, some things never change.

Notes: I don’t even remember the last time I giggled so hard writing a story.

Also on AO3

By Any Other Name Masterlist

~~*~~

It was only in the middle of the morning when Edge got an unexpected text from his brother. He picked up his phone curiously, reading the message with a frown.

you might want to come out here

With wary interest, he did. His office was on the third floor which was generally reserved only for those who worked for the Embassy. Jeff would likely never know it, but Edge had been the one who requested special permissions attached to his clearance to allow for him to pass through security, in case of an emergency.

Other Monsters were coming out of their offices, all wearing looks of curiosity. This did not bode well, what had his brother done…

The elevator door opened with a quiet ding and most of the third floor of the Embassy was treated to the sight of Stretch storming off it, dressed only in a long white sheet wrapped around him like a toga.

Ah.

The security guard barely glanced up from his magazine, “Hey, Stretch, nice sheet.”

“fuck off,” he snapped back. All the other Monsters stepped back as he stomped through towards Edge. His eye lights were snapping orange, his cheek bones hectically flushed the same shade. He was visibly livid.

He was gorgeous.

Edge waited patiently while Stretch stalked up to him, tamping down his sudden surge of arousal. That would have to wait.

Stretch stopped in front of him, breathing hard, and snarled out, “where the fuck are all my clothes?”

“Hello, love,” Edge said calmly. “Did you need something?”

“…don’t. don’t you even!” He scrambled to hold out a crumpled piece of paper…where had he even put that? It wasn’t worth considering. Edge took it and skimmed it. Not that he didn’t know what it said, his own neat handwriting on the page.

“Hmm,” Edge considered, “It says here that you’ve lost all your clothing privileges until you can dress like an adult again.”

“i can read, you prick!” Stretch glared at him furiously. His magic was glowing in his joints, snapping at his fingertips, and Edge automatically braced himself. Not that Stretch would hurt him, not on purpose, but it paid to be cautious. “what the fuck are you trying to pull!”

“Perhaps I’m trying to make it so I don’t get stared down on the sidewalk when we’re in public together?” Edge asked archly and Stretch sputtered, seething.

To be fair, Edge had started it although he liked to think he’d been driven to it. It was all because of Stretch‘s fondness of atrocious t-shirts. If it had terrible word play or an advertisement for some absurd, horrible product that no one would ever want, then Stretch needed to own it. Generally, they were covered by his sweatshirt, but this past week had been unseasonably hot and Edge had been treated daily to an endless array of the wretched things.

By the end of the week, he had simply been tired of seeing them and he’d asked Stretch, perhaps a little snarkier than necessary, if he’d signed some kind of contract that only allowed him to wear the ugliest t-shirts possible and if so, he should offer a refund.

He should have known better. Stretch seemed to take it as a personal challenge. Suddenly, he was wearing a different shirt every hour, each one more horrid than the last. When the weather cooled, he wore one of the damn things over his sweatshirt. He knotted them together to wear as a kilt instead of his normal track pants. The final straw had been when Edge had opened the curtain for his morning shower and found one hanging in the stall that had on it a picture of Stretch wearing yet another t-shirt with a picture of himself on it, and again, on to infinity.

It was entirely possible he’d snapped at that point.

“you emptied the entire closet!” Stretch screeched. He had. It had taken most of the night and it had been oh, so worth the effort.

“And you wore one of our Egyptian cotton sheets on the bus,” Edge pointed out, idly, “At least stop dragging it on the ground.”

“you even took the socks! and shoes!” Somehow, his growing indignation only made him more appealing. “i was barefoot on the fucking bus, they almost didn’t let me on!”

“Interesting, I would have thought the sheet would have been more of a deterrent,” Edge mused.

“i am not leaving without pants, i swear to fucking hell, edge, you—”

His ranting took a backseat to a sudden wolf whistle that rang over the office and it was that whistle that made Edge abruptly realize Stretch was gradually losing his tenuous grip on the sheet. It had already slid halfway down his spine at the back. Who the fuck…the smirk dropped off Edge's face like a falling stone and lacking any one person, he glared at the collection of people around them.

All of whom were watching with richly interested expressions as Stretch ranted and gestured with his free hand while the sheet steadily crept lower.

“Don't you people have work to do?" Edge snapped, agitated. A low murmur of denials was all he got for his troubles.

Oh, for…roughly, Edge stripped off his suit jacket and tried to sling it over Stretch’s shoulders, only to have it furiously shrugged away, “don’t, don’t you even—”

“Why don’t we discuss this in my office,” Edge said through gritted teeth. His amusement at the situation had faded the second it had gone from slapstick to burlesque.

Somehow, the sparkling orange in Stretch’s eye lights grew furiously brighter, “listen, asshole, i rode the bus in a fucking sheet, you will get me pants and you will get them now! i am trending on twitter, do you hear me? i have zero fucks left to give! i want pants if you have to peel them off fucking asgore!”

"I will give you my pants if you will just come with me!” Edge snapped, a little desperately because that sheet was growing more precarious by the moment and he was not enjoying the array of eyes lingering on his increasingly naked husband in the slightest.

To his surprise, Stretch stopped and gave him a thin smile, hitching his sheet up a couple of inches. “fine. hand them over.”

Edge blinked, replaying the words in his head, and realization hit. “I meant that I would give them to you in my office.”

Stretch’s smile was reminiscent of one of Red’s, sharp and spiteful, “hand. them. over.”

Well. This little prank had taken a particularly unpleasant turn. At this point, people were coming up from other floors to watch the commotion, so either they followed Stretch on twitter or people were sending texts, which they certainly could because every Monster there seemed to have their cell phone out, likely recording this for later enjoyment. Half of them were calmly sipping coffee, enjoying this unexpected mid-morning show.

For all that strategy was usually Edge’s greatest strength, it was currently failing him. What he did know was that he wasn’t about to take his pants off because he didn’t wear anything beneath his damn pants, something that Stretch knew all too well.

“I am not taking my pants off in this hallway,” Edge gritted out.

“well, i’m not wearing anything under this sheet, so make your choice,” Stretch hissed. He loosened his grip, letting it slide back down and the intrigued murmur that ran through the crowd was making fond thoughts of murder percolate in Edge’s skull.

Edge sighed inwardly. He was going to be paying for this for a very long time, but options were limited, and he made his choice.

Quickly, he caught up the end of the sheet and wrapped it around Stretch’s upper torso, pinning his arms before he could do more than yelp a protest. Then he ducked down enough to swing him over his shoulder and carried him briskly down the hall. It worked, but the effect that came from it was exactly as he expected.

“put me down!” Stretch howled, squirming against the dual constrictions of the sheet and Edge’s arm around his waist. “put me down, you asshole!”

Since he doubted at this point that he could make things worse, Edge gave Stretch a pointed slap on the pelvis, “Stop squirming, you’re going to make me drop you.”

It was the opposite of helpful as not only did his squirming increase, so did his volume. Edge winced at a particularly violent suggestion for his various orifices. That was certainly…creative.

If this ended up on Youtube he was going to rip out someone’s spine. Probably his own brother’s.

At the end of the hallway, Janice was holding open the door to his office helpfully and Edge muttered a thank you that she couldn’t have heard over Stretch’s angry curses.

Not that her smirk really deserved one.

He kicked the door shut behind him before lowering his squirming bundle to the floor and wincing as a spastic flail caught him across the face. A small price to pay to see Stretch emerging from his cotton prison, as puffed up and angry as a wet cat.

Before he could spit out a word, Edge had already skimmed off his trousers and tossed them into his face. “Pants. As requested.”

His indignation deflated a little with the demanded item in hand, fingering the fine material. Without an audience, his temper was cooling quickly. Stretch never had been able to stay angry for long. “i don’t even want your pants, i wanted my own,” Stretch muttered.

“Well, I didn’t bring them downtown,” Edge said archly. Stretch looked up at him, his eye lights flicking down his body, and Edge stood straight and let him. Yes, he likely looked a bit ridiculous without his trousers in a full suit that included his socks, but it was certainly better than looking like this in front of the entire office.

The anger had faded from Stretch’s eye lights, replaced by disbelief, “are you actually turned on?”

“Yes,” Edge admitted. It wasn’t as if he could deny it without his pants acting as a barrier. Between Stretch’s glorious temper tantrum and his delightful squirming, Edge didn’t have much motive to resist.

“pervert.” But the gleam in Stretch’s eye lights told him he didn’t mind.

Smirking, Edge reached behind him and flicked the lock on the door. They may as well indulge in the very thing that the entire Embassy was likely gossiping they were doing. The pants were tossed aside as Edge pushed Stretch to the ground, and put his foul mouth to better use.

Later, they were both tangled in the sheet when Edge picked up his phone, scrolling through the variety of messages. One from Red caught his attention and he read it silently.

there's bets going on. odds are 2 to 1 that you’re having sex. fifty to one that stretch outright murders you. what are we looking at paying out on?

Edge considered, then typed back, How much if I murdered him?

please. no bet, no one is stupid enough to lose money on you laying a rough finger on him, much less hurting him.

Irrationally pleased, Edge sent back, pay out 2 to 1, and settled back against the sofa arm, resting his cheekbone against the top of Stretch’s skull. He had meetings in less than an hour, a stack of paperwork to finish, and a secretary who surely knew what was going on behind his closed door.

Eventually, he’d work up the energy to care.

Next to him, Stretch stirred. “whatever you're planning to do to that kid who whistled at me, you can stop right there.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

“yeah, right,” Stretch yawned. He sat up, groaning. “don't even try that innocent act, pal, i know you.”

Edge only hummed, trailing his fingers down the spine that had come so close to being on display for most of the Monster contingency in the Embassy. It was not a view he was particularly interested in sharing, for any reason.

Stretch sighed, leaning briefly against the pressure of his hand and then drew away, “not that this wasn’t fun, but i still don’t have any clothes.”

Reluctantly, Edge let him go. “There’s a gym bag in the closet over there, you’re welcome to whatever is in it.”

“that’ll work,” Stretch said and leaned down to peck him sweetly on the cheek bone.

Laying on the sofa, Edge watched in appreciative silence as Stretch dug through the bag and found sweatpants and a plain black t-shirt, all that smooth, sleek bone disappearing beneath cotton fabric. Distracted as he was, he didn’t notice until Stretch was finished shoving his feet into a pair of tennis shoes that his mouth was curved in a malicious smirk.

Neatly, Stretch plucked up Edge’s trousers from the floor and he could only watch in horror as Stretch called cheerily over his shoulder as he walked out the door, “see you at home!”

“Wait!”

He may as well have saved his breath.

For a long moment, Edge sat beneath the sheet and considered his options. There were plenty of people in the Embassy who would bring him a pair of pants. There wasn’t a single one who wouldn’t make him pay for it.

Edge tipped his head back and laughed helplessly, harder than he had in his entire life, until he was breathless, his chest aching. Then he picked up his phone to scroll through his contacts, weighing the pros and cons of who he was going to beg for help.

-finis

#spicyhoney #papcest #keelywolfe #underfell #underswap #underswap papyrus #underfell papyrus #by any other name

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