🦋 Team Butterfly Forever 🦋
- Thread starter open_sketch
- Start date
- Original Mature Novel
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
btw can i just say i kind of obsessively research these days for my writing (anxiety you see) and this is how i discovered it is effectively impossible to find accurate past airline ticket costs
i found sources for every detail of Eve's upcoming flight, which is a real flight that really took off on may 6th 2014. i know what was on the menu and the brands for the complimentary drinks and i know the exact plane and how big the seats are and exactly when wheels went up and down. i don't know the names of the crew but i think i know how to find out
and i had to basically just guess at the price from a range larger than my low end estimate because airlines go out of their way to avoid publishing those stats so consumer comparison is more difficult
argh!
i found sources for every detail of Eve's upcoming flight, which is a real flight that really took off on may 6th 2014. i know what was on the menu and the brands for the complimentary drinks and i know the exact plane and how big the seats are and exactly when wheels went up and down. i don't know the names of the crew but i think i know how to find out
and i had to basically just guess at the price from a range larger than my low end estimate because airlines go out of their way to avoid publishing those stats so consumer comparison is more difficult
argh!
So quick (dumb) question, why can't Ward just teleport to Japan?
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
I mean there's a real issue with suddenly appearing in a country having never gone through a port of entry.
Karlito
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
Possibly reweaving all the threads of history had some effect on that. I've got to wonder who is even read Andy's letter.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
more importantly, this is short ranged flash step, not intercontinental teleport
to give you an idea of the vibes, the girls were more powerful than the anime sailor scouts but a lot less powerful than their manga counterparts. that said, as you may have gathered, the tone of their battles was rather grittier and hands on; these are still magical girls, they call their attacks in a haze of glitter and glowing notes, but like… Eve's main offensive spell for a while was to enchant her shield with a golden barrier made out of her love for the world, and then slam you through walls with it.
they might be magical girls, but they are very much American magical girls. the team's abilities are largely modelled on D&D classes!
to give you an idea of the vibes, the girls were more powerful than the anime sailor scouts but a lot less powerful than their manga counterparts. that said, as you may have gathered, the tone of their battles was rather grittier and hands on; these are still magical girls, they call their attacks in a haze of glitter and glowing notes, but like… Eve's main offensive spell for a while was to enchant her shield with a golden barrier made out of her love for the world, and then slam you through walls with it.
they might be magical girls, but they are very much American magical girls. the team's abilities are largely modelled on D&D classes!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
They're in a shock/killing kinda world!
...it's a wild talents reference
EDIT: (So, in wild talents, if you use a superpower to attack someone, rules as written, you do equal amounts of shock and killing damage, which is functionally on par with a gunshot or similarly damaging attack - making superpowers extremely dangerous if you don't have superhuman defenses.)
...it's a wild talents reference
EDIT: (So, in wild talents, if you use a superpower to attack someone, rules as written, you do equal amounts of shock and killing damage, which is functionally on par with a gunshot or similarly damaging attack - making superpowers extremely dangerous if you don't have superhuman defenses.)
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- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nah it's more because what any given person paid varies extremely widely. But if she's booking it at short notice the higher end of the range will be more likely.
Open_sketch knows this. Why would you think she doesn't?
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
Not much of an issue if you can teleport. Like, sure, yes, being in the country illicitly is a potential issue, if you A) get caught, B) fess up, and C) don't teleport right the fuck back out again. Like, yeah, issue, sure. Issue that won't be hurriedly brushed over and never spoken of again if you're suddenly, y'know, not in the country anymore? Nnnnnnnnot so much.
Like yeah we're not talking intercontinental teleport here, yes, sure. But...even flash-step-when-unobserved is entirely sufficient to go from "inside cell in tokyo" to "somewhere in the vicinity of Tokyo-Haneda" to "somewhere in the landing gear well and thence to the baggage compartment of an aircraft taking off therefrom to the destination of your choice".
I mean don't get me wrong it'd be a pain in the ass and anyone in their right mind would get an actual passport and book an actual flight because geez. But like...the problem is absolutely not "getting caught by border patrol". Even if they're aware of you, they probably can't catch you. Even if they can catch you, they definitely can't hold you unless forewarned of your supernatural capabilities in such a fashion that they actually believe it.
10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Depends entirely on whether or not CCTV counts as "observed". Because if it does, then half of post 9/11 paranoia might actually work, purely by accident.
Unrelated :
This was 2004, if I got my timeline correct.
Got to cancel the Butterfly knights for supporting the invasion of Iraq now.
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- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/They
Hm. Point.
I would be inclined to assume that (because magic) CCTV counts as long as there's a sapient being looking at the feed live, and doesn't count at all if it's just going to a tape or DVR, but I admit I'm basing that assumption on sweet fuck-all, so...
Damn good point.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'd guess that she wanted to break up, at least partially.
🦋 Chapter 2 - The Cat Returns (Part 2)
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Content Warning: Discussion of underage drinking, hallucinations, death and suicide
You hadn't been on an airplane since… 2003? Really? That didn't sound right, but no, it was just road trips. Everyone could chip in for gas money and you'd take Riley's crappy used van and it was off to LA or Disneyland or Butte Lake (heh) and you'd all laugh and sing along with the radio and you'd fall asleep on Kimiyo's shoulder in the back seat as the road went on and on…
It just seemed wrong because you'd gone to airports a lot. Kimiyo went overseas once a year like clockwork, leaving just after your birthday and arriving back the second-to-last Saturday in July and you'd meet her at the airport every time. And you'd seen off Brigid when she left, and Amara flew for work a few times a year, so you'd been to SFO plenty of times, just not through security.
It wasn't as bad as you feared; the line seemed long, but went quickly. You didn't much care for the new scanning machines, and you definitely didn't care for the fact you had to take the butterfly necklace off and put it in a tray along with your shoes. The fact that fate wouldn't let you lose it wasn't the point; you literally couldn't remember the last time you'd taken it off, and it felt wrong that you'd done so now. Like you'd reset a clock, or lost your high score.
A lot had changed, but every Butterfly Knight was still wearing their necklace. Kimiyo hid it subtly under her clothes, but it was there. Brigid would cling to it like a lifeline when she went out of focus. Riley had abandoned every other part of who she used to be, but you still saw the chain around her neck on the calls. You couldn't imagine otherwise.
You collapsed onto one of the seats at Gate A1, popped your earbuds in, and started on your backlog of Welcome to Nightvale, trying to fight the anxiety rising in your chest. It didn't feel real, a trip like this was something you were supposed to plan weeks and months in advance, you didn't just up and decide to travel across the Pacific. Wired from your meds and tired from the early wake-up, you stared at the ceiling and felt your thoughts spiralling away from you.
There were so many ways this could go wrong, and the one weighing heaviest on your mind as you anxiously wrapped your earbud cords around your fingers was that Kimiyo might just slam the door in your face. Maybe this was her trying to break up in a way that wouldn't hurt (which wasn't working), and all you showing up would do is trigger a fight. Were you really travelling halfway around the world so you could break down crying in the hallway outside your now-ex-girlfriend's door?
And that's putting aside the fact that if she did do that and you left with nothing but debt, you then had to go home and fight the Dark Queen and save the world. No biggie, you'd just fight Her Royal Floofiness (how did she get her hair to do that) without her! It's not like the Dark Queen is well known for her weird love of mind control powers that definitely hadn't had any long-term effects on your psychological development. It's not like Kimiyo was the only Butterfly Knight that was immune to all that. Super fair, extremely balanced.
You always used to complain that it wasn't fair you had to be a teenager and a superhero at the same time. Turns out it wasn't much more fair being a superhero and an adult.
Amara texted you just past nine, and twice more over the next two hours. Nothing from Brigid, she'd probably fallen asleep right after tutoring. Nothing from Kimiyo either, no matter how long you stared. You glanced repeatedly at the gate agents, worried you were coming off like a crazy person as you tapped your foot and stared at the screen and mummified your thumb with the earbud cord. Making eye contact with the blonde girl at the ticket scanny thing was probably a mistake; it wasn't like she could make the plane take off faster.
A few minutes of cycling through and staring at all the unchanging text chats later, you were shaken out of your spiral by a voice talking directly to you, saying a lot of words you didn't understand. You glanced up at the smiling face of a JAL employee, presumably some kind of supervisor, looking at you with the sort of professional worry one might employ when there's a crazy lady on the edge of tears at his gate. Presumably assuming you were nervous about going home rather than nervous about leaving it.
Face flushed and right back to being thirteen on your last trip, you had to sheepishly admit your Japanese proficiency extended to being able to introduce yourself and asking where the bathroom was. The man nodded, speaking in clear, if somewhat stilted, English.
"Are you travelling alone?" he asked. You nodded. "I know it can be nerve-wracking. Are you alright?"
You glanced reflexively at your phone, then nodded quickly.
"Yeah, sorry, just… long day? I… booked at four AM, kinda last minute emergency type stuff…" you rambled uselessly, trailing off. This guy definitely does not want to know your life story, idiot!
He indicated your boarding pass, and you offered it apologetically. He scanned it quickly, then handed it back.
"Ah, you're in luck, Miss Nakamura. Go talk to Susan at the gate; your seat is eligible to be upgraded to Premium Economy on this flight. A few less things to worry about, if nothing else?"
You sputtered your way through a kind of useless combination of thanks, apologies, and humble insistence that it was fine, really, blather that continued unabated at the desk and carried you all the way back to your original chair with a brand-new boarding pass in hand.
Pre-boarding (not you), Priority boarding, Group 3. That was you now! Suck it, Group 5! 19 E… One of the middle seats among four. USB port, funky multi-country power outlet, wifi? The future was now. There was also a cheap little blanket, a menu, and in a little plastic bag, a pair of slippers.
Airplane slippers! Nobody told you they gave you slippers when you went flying. There were also some earphones, a separate set of yellow earplugs, and a… blindfold? Why would… Sleep mask! That made more sense.
The flight attendants walked everyone through the technically complex procedure of putting on a seatbelt in two languages; you mostly spent that time daydreaming irresponsibly about the weirdly hot dude in the crumpled business suit in the seat across the aisle from yours (he was already dead asleep but was muttering along with the instructions). Then you were pressed back gently into your seat by the acceleration and you were up and off.
Once the seatbelt sign switched off, you grabbed your laptop and tried to use this new-fangled wi-ed fi, but it appeared the future sucked because while you could connect to the Gogo network, it didn't seem to Gogo onto the internet very well. Skype wouldn't log in and Firefox wouldn't load, so your dreams of Netflix were dashed. You closed your laptop and poked at the in-flight entertainment options a while, gave up, and just settled back into your seat and closed your eyes.
In ten hours you'd see Kimiyo again. Ten hours. After a year of waiting, ten hours felt like both an eternity and an instant. She hadn't responded to your texts before you'd left, and now that you were in the air you wouldn't see if she did until you touched down. The nightmare possibility that she might have told you to stay away and you wouldn't know until you were at her metaphorical door weighed heavily.
Once again, you found yourself wondering how the hell this had happened, all of this. Even when things were getting bad with the other girls, you and Kimiyo were close, everything was good, she was probably doing the best out of all of you. It wasn't like you'd fought or argued or were growing apart, the morning she'd left she'd clung to both you and Amara right up until you reached the security line.
Something had changed, after her grandfather's funeral. She wouldn't say what, she wouldn't talk about anything. She just said she was staying a while because something came up, and then she got distant. Colder. Stopped calling Amara separately, stopped calling you as often. It was only three months later that you found out she wasn't talking to her parents anymore, something you learned from them.
Not that they'd given any more details either. Inability to talk about literally anything was apparently an Okamoto family tradition. "Oh, you know how she is!" Apparently you didn't!
If she just didn't love you anymore… you couldn't say it was fine, because the thought made you want to cry, but it'd be something. A clear, concrete fact that would make sense. The thing that made it hurt was it was plainly obvious how much she did love you, you didn't need ESP to sense it, she needed you as badly as you needed her and you could hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes even through the lag and low bitrates. Something was keeping her away, and it hurt she wouldn't tell you what.
It didn't help anything to dwell, but it was hard not to. There was nothing else to do, just stuck with your thoughts between the middle-aged couple on one side and the absolutely ancient old lady snoozing on the other. In ten hours you'd be at Kimiyo's apartment or meeting her at a train station or something, begging her to come back with you. To save the world, and more importantly, save your relationship.
Yes, The World, you meant in that order. Last time you had a breakup, you got so emo about it you nearly tore the fabric of space and time asunder in your grief. The universe better get its shit together, that's all you were saying; you'd think misfortune would steer clear of the sort of people who could become Shadow Butterflies.
You poked the in-flight entertainment stream yet again, contemplated finally watching Frozen instead of just watching that one song on youtube over and over, decided singing along in the plane would be frowned upon, and just started cycling through the shows on the Japanese language half. You randomly hit play on a movie about skiing without reading the description based entirely on the excellent choice of hat from the girl in the poster, and then proceeded to not watch it as your thoughts tangled up again.
How was this happening again? You'd saved the world once already, you'd think that would be all anyone could ask of you. Maybe Kimiyo was just doing the smart thing by ducking out of this one; it was hard enough the first time. If you thought there was anyone else in the world that could do it, you'd have gone right back to bed.
She had more reason than most to want to duck out; she'd died last time. You'd undone that, she said she couldn't actually remember it happening, but that was the sort of thing that would probably put anyone off of superheroing. Actually, thinking about that… you suddenly weren't sure you wanted her to go. What if it happened again and you couldn't put it right again?
You turned the idea over and over in your head, the magnitude of it spreading. You were so excited to get the Knights back together, and sure they'd once again spring into action like they always did, but maybe none of them were up for this.
You unwrapped the cord from your fingers, trying to force your thoughts back in order. You tried to watch the movie; you'd basically missed the first few minutes and you didn't know who anyone was, but that was fine. Friends were out skiing in the height of 1980s snowsuit fashion. There was a meet-cute as the Lead Boy pulled the Lead Girl, the one in the white snowsuit from the poster, out of a snowbank. The girl got unsteadily back on her skis, made it about ten more feet down the hill, and fell right back over.
Finally, a character you could relate to. It was so nice to have representation.
You watched on, as best you could, as RomCom Shenanigans and ski tricks unfolded, but focusing was difficult. You were a sucker for this kind of movie, even one from before you were born; in better times it'd be good movie night fare with Amara. Right now, though, for what felt like the first time in your life, a cheesy romance came off as annoyingly saccharine and trivial.
That probably wasn't a good sign.
You didn't want to dwell on Kimiyo, but that just brought your thoughts to your other friends. All of them were hurting, which made the little pity-party you were having at ten thousand feet feel particularly indulgent. It was hard not to feel like you'd gotten off easy by comparison; you still had all your limbs, for one thing.
You'd tried to fix it, you really did, but the frayed ends of the string were coming apart in your hands and you didn't have enough to do it and save everyone who needed to be saved. Riley had said she wasn't bitter about it, she said it over and over, but it had crushed her. All the teams she wanted to try out for, all the trophies she was destined to win, it was all replaced with countless hours of physical therapy and pain. She couldn't even be proud of how she got the injury; instead of the heroic Knight that held a street alone for two hours, she was just another helpless girl left wounded in the wake of the Whatever It Was.
The Riley that used to stride tall through the halls, out and proud and daring anyone to say anything, was now limping along on a clumsy prosthetic. She tried to put on a brave face, kept training and practicing, she swore up and down that one of these days she'd be back to normal, then she went to college, dropped out of contact for a year, and came back with a ring on her finger and a different surname and a kid.
It wasn't as dramatic, but you suspected that maybe Brigid didn't make it through much better. You'd had broken limbs and broken ribs and flare-ups of pain in your back and shoulders despite the fact you weren't even 24 yet; you were supernaturally tough when you were transformed, but not invincible. Brigid had gotten hit, a lot, she was their priority, and didn't have your armour and shield to take the brunt of it. While Brigid had always been spacy, prone to drifting off into her thoughts, in retrospect that had gotten a lot worse in the years afterward. She was tired a lot, would need to have things repeated to her, sometimes it felt like she'd forgotten where she was, but at the time you'd just put it down to the fact she was up all night reading again, the nerd.
You should have gotten her help after she collapsed the second time, if not the first. But she said it was just low blood sugar, that she forgot to eat again. Haha, isn't that just like her?
You twisted up the flimsy airplane headphone cord in your hands again as your thoughts began to dwell on Esmé. You'd wondered at first how you were supposed to do this without her, but if she were still here, asking her to go might be the cruelest thing you could do.
For the year after the battle, the Knights always talked about it as going back to normal, back to a time before you were running around at night having life or death battles, back to being regular people. It only really sunk in after she disappeared that maybe that wasn't something Esmé could actually do; she'd been doing this for years before any of you, which had made her seem cool and experienced when you were fourteen and now made you impossibly sad. She was twelve when she started. What normal did she have to go back to?
None of you got away from this trauma-free, but Esmé was the only one whose flashbacks posed a danger to the people around her. Team Butterfly was big on sleepovers, in no small part because of the nightmares, which was how you kept finding yourself back there, not in your dreams but actually, physically, woven into Esmé's illusionary hallucinations as she involuntarily transformed the room into that last battlefield.
You'd done what you could, but it wasn't much. You were kids. By your last year of high school she was barely hanging on; she was jumpy, defensive, she snapped at people over nothing and got suspended repeatedly. You found out she was bringing her pistol to school in her bag because she didn't feel safe without it. In March, she showed up at your door, kicked out because her mum had finally caught on to how much she'd drunk out of her liquor cabinet. She spent the next month rotating between the houses of the rest of the team for 'sleepovers' as you all lied to your increasingly concerned parents.
A month before graduation, almost exactly six years ago, she had a bad flashback at Riley's place. Mrs. Carter had been pulled in too, and had gotten hurt. Esmé apologized, said she was going home to finally talk to her mom, and then she was gone. No note, no trace, no goodbyes. Gone.
The cheap plastic of the headphone cable cracked and snapped around the wire, and the movie became even less comprehensible as the sound became a stuttering and murky echo.
You never found out what happened. It wasn't surprising. If she'd run away, nobody would find her, and otherwise… You personally suspected she had gone to the bridge and jumped. Probably at night, probably with a weight so she wouldn't leave a trace. You used to hope you were wrong, but now you just hoped it was quick.
Life had gone on. Team Butterfly had one last hurrah as a group, a road trip to LA to see all the places Esmé had promised to show you from her hometown. You'd started at USF, Amara came back from New York with her degree and you'd moved in together with her and Kimiyo, time didn't stop for grief. You did your best, instituting the weekly call, but Tracy and Lyra had dropped out almost immediately. Brigid and Riley were mentally checked out. Team Butterfly was just you and Kimmy, like when you started, and then she left too.
You'd spent the last four years just wanting to break down and scream. This wasn't how it was supposed to go! You'd seen the future, you'd seen the Crystal Palace, the Kaleidoscope Throne, the marble round table whose seven chairs were set with each of your gemstones. Were they just for show, empty places set in honour of long-lost friends?
You were shaken out of your despair by one of the attendants, who was indicating to the old lady like 'is she okay?' All you could do was shrug and hope so. The reason for this interruption was revealed moments later as lunch arrived, and with it a hot towel and the blessed, wonderful relief of the drink cart.
You used to say that food was the best solution to misery, but that was before you met food's seductive mistress booze. A totally-noon-appropriate glass of Chivas Regal in hand and shockingly good egg fried rice rapidly making its way from tray to mouth genuinely did make things better; you settled back, questioned why exactly the workplace Christmas function unfolding on-screen included a girl in a Playboy Bunny tuxedo number, and laughed probably too loudly at the suspenders-bowtie-and-jeans combo on the glasses guy.
Somehow, as you ate, the world didn't seem quite so dark anymore, it didn't feel hopeless. Hard? Yes. Awful? Obviously. Completely unfair to you, paragon of love and truth that you were? Absolutely, but such was your beneficence you would forgive the world for making you work for your happy ending. That's what you did, why you fought, right? Hope was your business. How did you ever give in to such awful thoughts?
The answer occurred to you as you fumbled with the funny little pyramid of transparent plastic containing the salad dressing.
Breakfast. You had forgotten to eat breakfast.
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DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Just absolutely devastating.
Also Shadow Butterfly is a reference to the live action show, right?
Also Shadow Butterfly is a reference to the live action show, right?
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
It's actually a reference to Dark Willow from Buffy; while Team Butterfly are obviously primarily modelled on Sailor Moon, they take secondary inspiration from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as part of the process of making them Californians. For another example, it's why Prince(ss) Rose is a defector of sorts, the Prince that Fights Princes; Amara is Angel almost as much as she is Tuxedo Mask.
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DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
That's absolutely brilliant.
BethofDeath
Girls just wanna have pun
- Location
- Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"Are you telling me an egg fried that rice?"
"...I wish I was a girl."
"Oh, honey, I know a girl (if you know what I mean) who knows some people."
...sorry, it's like 2am here and the meme came to mind, with an extension to the gag.
"...I wish I was a girl."
"Oh, honey, I know a girl (if you know what I mean) who knows some people."
...sorry, it's like 2am here and the meme came to mind, with an extension to the gag.
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- Location
- France
I don't know what's up with Kimiyo, but I don't expect their relationship to survive this story arc. This doesn't feel functional, even if we disregard the ominous ??? that might be happening in Kimiyo's life. It feels like Kimiyo is just terrible at breaking up with her needy long-distance girlfriend.
Incidentally in a normal story I would expect Esmé to get resurrected later. One of the first things we learnt about this setting is that consequences are not permanent, after all. But the tone of this story really suggests that these consequences will be.
Incidentally in a normal story I would expect Esmé to get resurrected later. One of the first things we learnt about this setting is that consequences are not permanent, after all. But the tone of this story really suggests that these consequences will be.
NotInventedHere
MSV, Desert Class
- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The other option, which I'm currently leaning towards, is "she went Shadow Butterfly Esme and the recent buildup of evil energy is her doing". Because fighting your traumatised friend is good angst material, and while that could just be left as a background event of "awful things that the Butterflies went through", it could also be foreshadowing.
Hakazin
Serpent Admirer
- Pronouns
- She/Her
God, if that isn't a mood (commiserative, sincere)
God, if that isn't a mood (laughing out loud, also sincere)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I love this bit. It's sweet, funny, and inspiring by turns. 🦋
- Location
- Somewhere in the stacks
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Our girl remembering hope is a skill you must hone when she gets some food in her. Yep. Sounds right.