SanguisAnima
Σ Series Z10/0 Group A 4A-GELU Mk1
- Location
- nowhere important
I just had the weirdest idea.
Time this to Dethklok's "Murmaider" (the "Hold your breath, swim and strain" section).
Worm: Blanket aka The Diaper Changer (Com-pleated)
- Thread starter ScottotheUnwise
- Start date
Time this to Dethklok's "Murmaider" (the "Hold your breath, swim and strain" section).
- Location
- Elsewhere
I was going to say I love running across filk in the wild, bonus points for it being in a story I like.
Filking Good Parody Song
Balrog
not Durin's Bane
- Location
- The Mines of Moria
Right so its about twenty four hours after I originally posted the first verse with no intention of going any further but this would not leave me alone so here is a fan based parody of this. I also did a bit of editing and will keep the original post as is. I blame my evil mind @MirrimBlackfox @SanguisAnima and @ScottotheUnwise
Needles flash, Spindles swing
Shining Thimble's piercing ring
Plushies run with polished shield
Hem Those Bastards till They Yield
Midnight Skirt and blood red shirt
Stitch to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Follow orders as you're told,
Make Their Yellow Blood Run Cold
Stitch until you die or drop,
A Force Like Ours is Hard to Stop
Close your mind to stress and pain,
Sew till You're No Longer Sane
Let not a one damn cur pass by,
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Garb your women and children well,
Send These Bastards Back to Hell
We'll teach them the ways of cloth,
They Won't Come Here Any More
Use your thimble and use your head,
Stitch till Every One is Garbed
Raise the flag up to the sky,
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Dawn has broke, the time has come,
Move Your Feet to a Marching Drum
We'll win the war and pay the toll,
We'll Stitch as One in Heart and Soul
Midnight skirt and blood red shirt,
Stitch to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Needles flash, Spindles swing
Shining Thimble's piercing ring
Plushies run with polished shield
Hem Those Bastards till They Yield
Midnight Skirt and blood red shirt
Stitch to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
EDITED: fixed spelling errors pointed out by @ScottotheUnwise thank you for that. Honestly meant Stitch not Stich.
Needles flash, Spindles swing
Shining Thimble's piercing ring
Plushies run with polished shield
Hem Those Bastards till They Yield
Midnight Skirt and blood red shirt
Stitch to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Follow orders as you're told,
Make Their Yellow Blood Run Cold
Stitch until you die or drop,
A Force Like Ours is Hard to Stop
Close your mind to stress and pain,
Sew till You're No Longer Sane
Let not a one damn cur pass by,
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Garb your women and children well,
Send These Bastards Back to Hell
We'll teach them the ways of cloth,
They Won't Come Here Any More
Use your thimble and use your head,
Stitch till Every One is Garbed
Raise the flag up to the sky,
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Dawn has broke, the time has come,
Move Your Feet to a Marching Drum
We'll win the war and pay the toll,
We'll Stitch as One in Heart and Soul
Midnight skirt and blood red shirt,
Stitch to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry,
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
Needles flash, Spindles swing
Shining Thimble's piercing ring
Plushies run with polished shield
Hem Those Bastards till They Yield
Midnight Skirt and blood red shirt
Stitch to Keep this Land Your Own
Sound the horn and call the cry
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
How Many of Them Can We Make (Tie)Die!
EDITED: fixed spelling errors pointed out by @ScottotheUnwise thank you for that. Honestly meant Stitch not Stich.
Last edited:
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
<Wrapped so it wouldn't be 200 lines of reply with 2 lines of new content>
edit: Also threadmarked
Very nice. Purist in me cringes seeing Stich for Stitch but I have been known to consistently misspell even with spell
Tie Die huh? Concept appropriated. Prepare to patch original concept into fic. We are the Serge, your stitchwork and patterns will be assewilated.
(Sounded better in my head, but then all my voices there have deep baritones and are generally pleasant sounding)
Kryslin
[Has Delusions of Authorship]
- Location
- Mythic Iowa
Stich, in English, is a verse or line of poetry (Dictionary.com)
Stich, in German, is 'Sting' (Google Translate)
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
Gah. That is almost like when I found 'Monistaa' (think Monster) is Finnish for Duplicate and used it in Calico.
Spellwrecker can latch on to the weirdest things and INSIST you change them, taking typing the space after a word as complicit acceptance of its suggestion.
Case in point why I never post anything from a mobile as long as I Can avoid it.Gah. That is almost like when I found 'Monistaa' (think Monster) is Finnish for Duplicate and used it in Calico.
Spellwrecker can latch on to the weirdest things and INSIST you change them, taking typing the space after a word as complicit acceptance of its suggestion.
And also why I always recheck what I type immediately after I do so.
This post itself HAD been edited a couple (if not half-a-dozen) times DURING its compilation, after all.
And it's just THREE LINES.
FOUR.
*SEVEN*.
Darning a Hole in Time
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
************ School 8 --Finals
It was dark.
Not like "where are my glasses" late at night dark.
No, this was deluxe, feels like it is solid chocolate pudding up to the ceiling, clinging to everything and too thick to breathe dark. This is in fact advanced dark.
I was suspended. Or floating. I'm not sure which it is.
*It is quite dark, yes.* a voice in my head spoke up.
I jerked alert, finding just a little space around me, like a garbage bag's worth that I could feel around me as clear of the pudding darkness.
*Who is there?*
*Me.* The voice fairly giggled.
*I mean, who are you when you are at home?* Trying for civility in tone though I was still freaked out.
The answer sounded a little confused. *Why would I be any different when not at home?*
*Okay, different question. Where am I*
*Why would I know where you are if you can't even tell me?*
This was beginning to sound like a late night conversation I'd had with Emma when we were children during a sleepover, under a blan…
"Thank you. That is much better." The little girl in front of me was Emma, dressed in that long Alexandria sleeping shirt she favored when she was around eight. Behind her I could see the chairs we had made the blanket fort from, and now felt the pair behind me holding it all up. "It was quite dreary there with no reference."
Her smile was genuine, but the voice was not Emma's.
She frowned again. "Of course I am not Emma, silly. This is your world, but without willing anything into existence there isn't any."
My mind drifted. A scene from a movie popped in. "The Never Ending Story" with the childlike princess showing Sebastion a glowing point of light.
"Focus please." Same fort, same t-shirt but now it was the Princess from the movie looking at me and speaking with a British accent. "If you don't hold on, nothing will exist here."
"Is this my Blanket Space?" I ask, feeling outward but getting nothing. A glance down and my arms are just human, nothing Blanket about them --not even the threads woven into my skin.
"No… and Yes." She smiled. "It could be, if you reach out and claim the power to make it so." She used a hand to open the flap of the Blanket tent onto nothingness. Well not 'nothing', but it certainly wasn't a house or anything ordinary like that. It was like Blanket Space, but not socks or floating houses or my little sun. And no … the fight!
"Where is everything? Everyone!" I started to hyperventilate a little over it all.
The fold slid closed as she held up hands to calm me. "This is where you were. Just not WHEN you were." Her hand gestured down her front. "This is just a frame, a template to make it easier to interact. It is much harder to communicate once everything starts getting complex." Her frown is cute even, "Not least of which is when he came along and tried to butt in."
"Explain it like I'm five."
She dimples. "I am Blankie. Your power. Pow-ers?" She tasted the last one like it made more sense. "Before you were Blanket, you were Taylor and I was just the potential of the power you had." She sits up and beams at me. "But that thing, the Endbringer, it was eating you up. It wanted to devour you and take all of it for itself. And you retreated along the only path you could take." Hands wide. "Before."
"Before?"
She nodded. "Before you were Blanket."
I glanced down at myself and realized it was true. I wasn't eight like she appeared to be. I was the same Taylor I had been. And I had a little bandage on my hand from a sharp handle in the crappy little apartment we'd lived in.
The last time I had worn any kind of bandage. Because I could heal myself.
"How is it possible?" I stumble in my words. "The kind of energy involved is more than the sun, hundreds of suns. Scientists have said…" I stopped as she was waving her hand back and forth like a stink under her nose.
"Science is just guessing until each guess is proven wrong and another slapped into place on the pile of dead suppositions." Her nose wrinkled. "Think of it this way. Inside Blanket Space, you could rearrange gravity, light, matter if you choose to do so, right?"
"Uh, yeah I guess." I blanche as some of the things I just naturally did were itemized like a long grocery receipt.
"And you could do it in the real world, as long as the object --ahem, person-- was wrapped in or touching some part of your material."
I nod weakly.
"And you could take over cloth from a distance, making it your material."
Another nod, with an eye twitch.
"Reality manipulation. Anything wearing cloth or your material."
"Ah?" I raise a finger.
"Everything within Blanket Space and anything touching it tangentially, is your bitch. Was your bitch. Will be?" Finger tapping her chin. "But you refrained from recognizing it fully, even when you manifested threads in your human body to achieve flight."
I blinked. "Recognize what?"
"Blanket Space touches everything. Everywhere. Every when…"
I scoff a little. "It can't be like that!" I tap my wrist like pointing at a watch. "There was a beginning. The bus!"
With one finger to the side of her nose she nods. "The bus." She looks toward the flaps which open to show, in near slow motion, the bus from the outside as it happened. In front of us the glass shattered and flew toward people, the image rock steady locked to the side as the bus tilted away from the impact. I could see Renee and Nana flailing, myself twisting to not land on them. Other people in various poses, falling or flying, glass starting to cut them.
"It is up to you how this plays out." She holds her arms crossed in front of herself. "Let them be hurt --or die. Or heal them."
I felt myself already leaning toward the opening. "How?"
Her smile was radiant. Her hand held out to me. "Take my hand. My … power. Make it yours."
The one thing I had never understood about that accident, the bus itself, was that all the cloth wrapping around everyone was red. Patchy had so little red in it, being mostly pink or blue, jeans material or patterned.
But the carpet was red.
My hand in hers I flexed my power. Streamers wrapped and blocked the glass that hadn't cut yet, healed the spots that were already cut. Caught the flying bodies, cushioned and held them close. My own self was last to be held, not healing the leg as that would change things. But healing the thing in my head to what felt right. Powers.
Change.
It dawned on me even as I realized I was alone in the tent fort, looking at the bus and all the people just realizing they were still alive.
I gave myself powers.
Did I just change the past? Or did I just initiate a loop of my own creation to create the past as I remember it?
I felt a snigger in the back of my mind.
I hope they were okay back at the fi… oh shit I left them, ran away. So many people would die before I got back…
Blink.
This was Blanket Space.
I controlled space here, reality, TIME for Pete's sake!
'Why the fuck would I go back to after I was being eaten, or even to just when the Endbringer was starting the fight at all?'
The sense of a chuckle in the back of my mind was louder now.
Shenanigans.
*********************
The lagoon outside the ex-Cauldron base. Rebecca and David, side by side in the warm tropical waters.
It was wonderful.
Up until it was somewhat not.
A shiver ran down his spine.
As he watched the sun set's reflection on the water he felt his hand in Becca's own squeezed.
"I think I felt a twitch … on the fourth power. The last time I felt anything like it was when Ziz was pulled out of Bet entirely." Eidolon's voice caught Alexandria's attention like an ice cube slipped down her back.
A voice from behind them brought them back to reality. "Would you folks like a refill?" The apron and tray marked him as 'help' but the face was mostly scars. One of the Bird Cage 'trustees' then.
"No, thank you." David nodded to the man.
"As you say." He put his pad away and moved back from the water line, the gaps where the water would not touch his legs filling in as he cleared the beach.
He walked back up to the Tiki themed bar there, with Lustrum --Lucy Hebert-- manning it like a commander over an army. The trustees of the Bird Cage were sitting at tables, eating and drinking like anyone else after a hard day of work. Some of them from clearing land or carpentry, some from working with the freed Case 53 folk who decided to stay on in this world, a place where their differences held no problems. Thanks to Blanket.
Rebecca was still looking at David. "You don't look alarmed any more." She ventured.
David looked up at her. "Alarmed?" He looked around. "Why?"
The woman known by the cape name Alexandria for so long glanced around confused. "You were just telling me you felt something in your powers. Something like an Endbringer pull."
David pulled his sunglasses down a little. "Are you sure? I remember no such thing."
*****************
"Director? Would you mind terribly if Kid and I took a little side trip?" I was asking, using the comms for a video call from Blanket Space.
"How far and how long?" Emily Piggot was terse as a default setting, but she had a lot of leeway for Blanket after all the things done by her and tangential to her.
"Oh, just for an afternoon or so. Earth Bet only and Blanket Space. We were just tooling around really and only noticed we are close to southeast Asia or so in relation to Bet. Wanted to stop in for a market trip, maybe pick up some local clothing or weaving. MAYBE heal in a local hospital or something." I rolled my eyes at Kid.
Emily chuckled. "There is a lot of goodwill in that part of the world for you after China and that plague you shut down, my girl, but don't go pushing things." She winced. "Dragon gave you the updated credentials, right?"
"Yes ma'am. All the Ward phones got the upgrade, just the same as the Protectorate members. Digital passports. Local electronic fund exchange on command." I noted, reciting the list.
"And if they only take cash?" The last tired item of a checklist.
I sighed. "If they want hard currency, I can just produce some American coins or even gold wire on command. We aren't hurting for trade goods." I wasn't kidding either. We had gifts from nearly every country cataloged in my room in Blanket Space. Quite a few of them were from Aleph as well.
"Activate your 'am traveling' status and drop a note to Armsmaster. Or to Dragon to pass along. Permission granted."
I smiled. Having reached my sixteenth birthday meant I was on a looser leash as a Ward, able to do things without parental permission for every little detail. I'd texted Dad about the side trip of course, but all he'd noted in his answer was that if we stayed overnight there had better 'damn well be separate room receipts'.
Love you too, Dad.
******************
"So, explain to me this feeling again?" Chris was asking.
I winced. Note being able to tell him everything, I had just told him I was feeling like there was --ahem-- a 'weak spot in the fabric of reality' here.
"And we are here to do what?" He persisted.
I smile as I finish shunting the newly forming Endbringer out of our reality, to a certain green tinged "hell" as described by a certain Captain we haven't officially met yet. "A stitch in time, saves nine."
We waited in the quiet jungle clearing for a while, smiling at a young boy riding a little moped-like thing through the path alongside it. He stopped and gabbled a bit at us.
Kid's translator caught the gist of his reaction. "What are you doing, silly white people sitting in the place of spirits? If you are not careful, you will awaken a ghost to come eat you." Shaking his head, he drives away towards a village we can see in the distance.
"First stop?" Kid asked.
"Well, first with anything of interest, since that feeling I had didn't pan out."
A few minutes later found us in a tiny marketplace, looking through baskets of fruit and weavings --mostly baskets but still intricate stuff.
A woman in holding a crying toddler sits morosely next to a leaf with a small pile of yellow fruit. I catch her eye and see she is near to tears and ready to shy away from us. Kid is wearing his armor and I am in an outfit that doesn't scream Blanket --no bear head for example-- but doesn't exactly say normal either.
I was reaching for the little boy when she indignantly spoke up.
Trans: "You cannot have my child! He is the only thing I have."
My hand touches her arm and I wave away Kid's translator as I can understand what she said. "I won't hurt him, or you." I felt the pull of the woman. Malnourished. Tired. Old injuries that have not quite healed. Gone.
Her expression is stunned as I take the toddler, getting my first look at the face. Harelip. Unusual in the states, but not quite eradicated. The split reaches his nose and makes it run constantly, irritating his sinuses. His teeth are crooked and lack enamel. Aside from this it is clear she gives him the lion share of whatever she can get.
"There we go. That must be why you were crying." I brush his hair back and he looks up at me with that goofy grin, normal lips and bright white WHOLE teeth showing. The crying has stopped.
The market goes quiet around us.
"What did you do?" she asks, not seeing his face yet.
I hand him back, his clothes and bottom cleaner as well. "I changed his diaper. He was a little wet."
Chris, darling Chris was right there to divert attention from things. With his translator, he painfully offered to buy her entire stock for a couple coins.
The woman, at first confused by her son's healing, but now automatically falling into haggle mode answered that a handful of Ringgits did not pay for her time in harvesting the fruit, and bringing the fruit to market. She inhaled to say more but Chris was showing her the coins he had in hand and she stopped dead.
They were promotional coins the protectorate handed out at events. Many of them were silver or gold far in excess of a normal coin. They were gaudy. They were big. They were in a word, collectible.
He also pulled out a plastic bag covered figurine of himself as Kid Win. He winked at me through his helmet's visor.
I proceeded to make a little ragdoll version of me to size with the figurine, making it with the bear head and all.
Her surprise was evident as the little boy took the doll in hand, then leaned to receive the figurine as well, holding them and making them move like talking to each other. He pressed the coins, five of them, into her hand.
I picked up the large leaf, opening a hole to Blanket Space and letting them roll inside, into a basket I wove in the style of those around us inside the kitchen at the House there. I would need to look up the exact name of the fruit some other time.
At our side a girl smiled brightly, saying something my own translation didn't catch. "Put app a!"
Oh. I needed a local anchor, a connection and I wasn't touching the woman directly anymore. The toddler didn't count as he was not fluent in the dialects used here. I patted her shoulder, changing the top she wore into my material as well. Ah "putappe" was what the local word for Blanket sounded like.
I answered her in their language. "Yes, I am Blanket."
It seems we were not too far away from civilization to not have autograph hounds --although this looked like her diary, not a book by itself.
I signed it, and also gave her a handkerchief with my initials.
The adults seemed impassive, waiting until we moved further along the market to close in and pester the woman.
A few minutes later a man in uniform huffed his way over to us. He wasn't Police, he looked more like a middle aged doctor in khaki with a red cross instead of a badge.
"Excuse me. I am sorry to impose, but there are others at a local clinic if you have time." He was bowing profusely.
Kid might have sent the man away but I had a better plan. It fit what I was doing in the Bay after all. I agreed to see them for a few minutes.
He led us to a building that stank in many ways. Half of it was injured people in various stages of wasting away after a heavy injury and no money to go to a city hospital. The other half was like an orphanage, with screaming babies and unhappy children trying to make do with little.
It was clear he was more of a volunteer here than a resident. And only on site for a few days at a time. His bags weren't even unpacked for the night.
"If you can help them, please do." His voice cracked as he spoke English to us.
Kid looked at me for direction. I pulled out a pre packed bag of t-shirts, the kind we were handing out at events. "Put these on those with injuries. They won't need them for long, and keep them here in the village clinic afterward."
Chris raised an eyebrow. "And you?"
My eyes were on the crying youngsters half watching us.
"I will do what I know how to. Change diapers."
It was dark.
Not like "where are my glasses" late at night dark.
No, this was deluxe, feels like it is solid chocolate pudding up to the ceiling, clinging to everything and too thick to breathe dark. This is in fact advanced dark.
I was suspended. Or floating. I'm not sure which it is.
*It is quite dark, yes.* a voice in my head spoke up.
I jerked alert, finding just a little space around me, like a garbage bag's worth that I could feel around me as clear of the pudding darkness.
*Who is there?*
*Me.* The voice fairly giggled.
*I mean, who are you when you are at home?* Trying for civility in tone though I was still freaked out.
The answer sounded a little confused. *Why would I be any different when not at home?*
*Okay, different question. Where am I*
*Why would I know where you are if you can't even tell me?*
This was beginning to sound like a late night conversation I'd had with Emma when we were children during a sleepover, under a blan…
"Thank you. That is much better." The little girl in front of me was Emma, dressed in that long Alexandria sleeping shirt she favored when she was around eight. Behind her I could see the chairs we had made the blanket fort from, and now felt the pair behind me holding it all up. "It was quite dreary there with no reference."
Her smile was genuine, but the voice was not Emma's.
She frowned again. "Of course I am not Emma, silly. This is your world, but without willing anything into existence there isn't any."
My mind drifted. A scene from a movie popped in. "The Never Ending Story" with the childlike princess showing Sebastion a glowing point of light.
"Focus please." Same fort, same t-shirt but now it was the Princess from the movie looking at me and speaking with a British accent. "If you don't hold on, nothing will exist here."
"Is this my Blanket Space?" I ask, feeling outward but getting nothing. A glance down and my arms are just human, nothing Blanket about them --not even the threads woven into my skin.
"No… and Yes." She smiled. "It could be, if you reach out and claim the power to make it so." She used a hand to open the flap of the Blanket tent onto nothingness. Well not 'nothing', but it certainly wasn't a house or anything ordinary like that. It was like Blanket Space, but not socks or floating houses or my little sun. And no … the fight!
"Where is everything? Everyone!" I started to hyperventilate a little over it all.
The fold slid closed as she held up hands to calm me. "This is where you were. Just not WHEN you were." Her hand gestured down her front. "This is just a frame, a template to make it easier to interact. It is much harder to communicate once everything starts getting complex." Her frown is cute even, "Not least of which is when he came along and tried to butt in."
"Explain it like I'm five."
She dimples. "I am Blankie. Your power. Pow-ers?" She tasted the last one like it made more sense. "Before you were Blanket, you were Taylor and I was just the potential of the power you had." She sits up and beams at me. "But that thing, the Endbringer, it was eating you up. It wanted to devour you and take all of it for itself. And you retreated along the only path you could take." Hands wide. "Before."
"Before?"
She nodded. "Before you were Blanket."
I glanced down at myself and realized it was true. I wasn't eight like she appeared to be. I was the same Taylor I had been. And I had a little bandage on my hand from a sharp handle in the crappy little apartment we'd lived in.
The last time I had worn any kind of bandage. Because I could heal myself.
"How is it possible?" I stumble in my words. "The kind of energy involved is more than the sun, hundreds of suns. Scientists have said…" I stopped as she was waving her hand back and forth like a stink under her nose.
"Science is just guessing until each guess is proven wrong and another slapped into place on the pile of dead suppositions." Her nose wrinkled. "Think of it this way. Inside Blanket Space, you could rearrange gravity, light, matter if you choose to do so, right?"
"Uh, yeah I guess." I blanche as some of the things I just naturally did were itemized like a long grocery receipt.
"And you could do it in the real world, as long as the object --ahem, person-- was wrapped in or touching some part of your material."
I nod weakly.
"And you could take over cloth from a distance, making it your material."
Another nod, with an eye twitch.
"Reality manipulation. Anything wearing cloth or your material."
"Ah?" I raise a finger.
"Everything within Blanket Space and anything touching it tangentially, is your bitch. Was your bitch. Will be?" Finger tapping her chin. "But you refrained from recognizing it fully, even when you manifested threads in your human body to achieve flight."
I blinked. "Recognize what?"
"Blanket Space touches everything. Everywhere. Every when…"
I scoff a little. "It can't be like that!" I tap my wrist like pointing at a watch. "There was a beginning. The bus!"
With one finger to the side of her nose she nods. "The bus." She looks toward the flaps which open to show, in near slow motion, the bus from the outside as it happened. In front of us the glass shattered and flew toward people, the image rock steady locked to the side as the bus tilted away from the impact. I could see Renee and Nana flailing, myself twisting to not land on them. Other people in various poses, falling or flying, glass starting to cut them.
"It is up to you how this plays out." She holds her arms crossed in front of herself. "Let them be hurt --or die. Or heal them."
I felt myself already leaning toward the opening. "How?"
Her smile was radiant. Her hand held out to me. "Take my hand. My … power. Make it yours."
The one thing I had never understood about that accident, the bus itself, was that all the cloth wrapping around everyone was red. Patchy had so little red in it, being mostly pink or blue, jeans material or patterned.
But the carpet was red.
My hand in hers I flexed my power. Streamers wrapped and blocked the glass that hadn't cut yet, healed the spots that were already cut. Caught the flying bodies, cushioned and held them close. My own self was last to be held, not healing the leg as that would change things. But healing the thing in my head to what felt right. Powers.
Change.
It dawned on me even as I realized I was alone in the tent fort, looking at the bus and all the people just realizing they were still alive.
I gave myself powers.
Did I just change the past? Or did I just initiate a loop of my own creation to create the past as I remember it?
I felt a snigger in the back of my mind.
I hope they were okay back at the fi… oh shit I left them, ran away. So many people would die before I got back…
Blink.
This was Blanket Space.
I controlled space here, reality, TIME for Pete's sake!
'Why the fuck would I go back to after I was being eaten, or even to just when the Endbringer was starting the fight at all?'
The sense of a chuckle in the back of my mind was louder now.
Shenanigans.
*********************
The lagoon outside the ex-Cauldron base. Rebecca and David, side by side in the warm tropical waters.
It was wonderful.
Up until it was somewhat not.
A shiver ran down his spine.
As he watched the sun set's reflection on the water he felt his hand in Becca's own squeezed.
"I think I felt a twitch … on the fourth power. The last time I felt anything like it was when Ziz was pulled out of Bet entirely." Eidolon's voice caught Alexandria's attention like an ice cube slipped down her back.
A voice from behind them brought them back to reality. "Would you folks like a refill?" The apron and tray marked him as 'help' but the face was mostly scars. One of the Bird Cage 'trustees' then.
"No, thank you." David nodded to the man.
"As you say." He put his pad away and moved back from the water line, the gaps where the water would not touch his legs filling in as he cleared the beach.
He walked back up to the Tiki themed bar there, with Lustrum --Lucy Hebert-- manning it like a commander over an army. The trustees of the Bird Cage were sitting at tables, eating and drinking like anyone else after a hard day of work. Some of them from clearing land or carpentry, some from working with the freed Case 53 folk who decided to stay on in this world, a place where their differences held no problems. Thanks to Blanket.
Rebecca was still looking at David. "You don't look alarmed any more." She ventured.
David looked up at her. "Alarmed?" He looked around. "Why?"
The woman known by the cape name Alexandria for so long glanced around confused. "You were just telling me you felt something in your powers. Something like an Endbringer pull."
David pulled his sunglasses down a little. "Are you sure? I remember no such thing."
*****************
"Director? Would you mind terribly if Kid and I took a little side trip?" I was asking, using the comms for a video call from Blanket Space.
"How far and how long?" Emily Piggot was terse as a default setting, but she had a lot of leeway for Blanket after all the things done by her and tangential to her.
"Oh, just for an afternoon or so. Earth Bet only and Blanket Space. We were just tooling around really and only noticed we are close to southeast Asia or so in relation to Bet. Wanted to stop in for a market trip, maybe pick up some local clothing or weaving. MAYBE heal in a local hospital or something." I rolled my eyes at Kid.
Emily chuckled. "There is a lot of goodwill in that part of the world for you after China and that plague you shut down, my girl, but don't go pushing things." She winced. "Dragon gave you the updated credentials, right?"
"Yes ma'am. All the Ward phones got the upgrade, just the same as the Protectorate members. Digital passports. Local electronic fund exchange on command." I noted, reciting the list.
"And if they only take cash?" The last tired item of a checklist.
I sighed. "If they want hard currency, I can just produce some American coins or even gold wire on command. We aren't hurting for trade goods." I wasn't kidding either. We had gifts from nearly every country cataloged in my room in Blanket Space. Quite a few of them were from Aleph as well.
"Activate your 'am traveling' status and drop a note to Armsmaster. Or to Dragon to pass along. Permission granted."
I smiled. Having reached my sixteenth birthday meant I was on a looser leash as a Ward, able to do things without parental permission for every little detail. I'd texted Dad about the side trip of course, but all he'd noted in his answer was that if we stayed overnight there had better 'damn well be separate room receipts'.
Love you too, Dad.
******************
"So, explain to me this feeling again?" Chris was asking.
I winced. Note being able to tell him everything, I had just told him I was feeling like there was --ahem-- a 'weak spot in the fabric of reality' here.
"And we are here to do what?" He persisted.
I smile as I finish shunting the newly forming Endbringer out of our reality, to a certain green tinged "hell" as described by a certain Captain we haven't officially met yet. "A stitch in time, saves nine."
We waited in the quiet jungle clearing for a while, smiling at a young boy riding a little moped-like thing through the path alongside it. He stopped and gabbled a bit at us.
Kid's translator caught the gist of his reaction. "What are you doing, silly white people sitting in the place of spirits? If you are not careful, you will awaken a ghost to come eat you." Shaking his head, he drives away towards a village we can see in the distance.
"First stop?" Kid asked.
"Well, first with anything of interest, since that feeling I had didn't pan out."
A few minutes later found us in a tiny marketplace, looking through baskets of fruit and weavings --mostly baskets but still intricate stuff.
A woman in holding a crying toddler sits morosely next to a leaf with a small pile of yellow fruit. I catch her eye and see she is near to tears and ready to shy away from us. Kid is wearing his armor and I am in an outfit that doesn't scream Blanket --no bear head for example-- but doesn't exactly say normal either.
I was reaching for the little boy when she indignantly spoke up.
Trans: "You cannot have my child! He is the only thing I have."
My hand touches her arm and I wave away Kid's translator as I can understand what she said. "I won't hurt him, or you." I felt the pull of the woman. Malnourished. Tired. Old injuries that have not quite healed. Gone.
Her expression is stunned as I take the toddler, getting my first look at the face. Harelip. Unusual in the states, but not quite eradicated. The split reaches his nose and makes it run constantly, irritating his sinuses. His teeth are crooked and lack enamel. Aside from this it is clear she gives him the lion share of whatever she can get.
"There we go. That must be why you were crying." I brush his hair back and he looks up at me with that goofy grin, normal lips and bright white WHOLE teeth showing. The crying has stopped.
The market goes quiet around us.
"What did you do?" she asks, not seeing his face yet.
I hand him back, his clothes and bottom cleaner as well. "I changed his diaper. He was a little wet."
Chris, darling Chris was right there to divert attention from things. With his translator, he painfully offered to buy her entire stock for a couple coins.
The woman, at first confused by her son's healing, but now automatically falling into haggle mode answered that a handful of Ringgits did not pay for her time in harvesting the fruit, and bringing the fruit to market. She inhaled to say more but Chris was showing her the coins he had in hand and she stopped dead.
They were promotional coins the protectorate handed out at events. Many of them were silver or gold far in excess of a normal coin. They were gaudy. They were big. They were in a word, collectible.
He also pulled out a plastic bag covered figurine of himself as Kid Win. He winked at me through his helmet's visor.
I proceeded to make a little ragdoll version of me to size with the figurine, making it with the bear head and all.
Her surprise was evident as the little boy took the doll in hand, then leaned to receive the figurine as well, holding them and making them move like talking to each other. He pressed the coins, five of them, into her hand.
I picked up the large leaf, opening a hole to Blanket Space and letting them roll inside, into a basket I wove in the style of those around us inside the kitchen at the House there. I would need to look up the exact name of the fruit some other time.
At our side a girl smiled brightly, saying something my own translation didn't catch. "Put app a!"
Oh. I needed a local anchor, a connection and I wasn't touching the woman directly anymore. The toddler didn't count as he was not fluent in the dialects used here. I patted her shoulder, changing the top she wore into my material as well. Ah "putappe" was what the local word for Blanket sounded like.
I answered her in their language. "Yes, I am Blanket."
It seems we were not too far away from civilization to not have autograph hounds --although this looked like her diary, not a book by itself.
I signed it, and also gave her a handkerchief with my initials.
The adults seemed impassive, waiting until we moved further along the market to close in and pester the woman.
A few minutes later a man in uniform huffed his way over to us. He wasn't Police, he looked more like a middle aged doctor in khaki with a red cross instead of a badge.
"Excuse me. I am sorry to impose, but there are others at a local clinic if you have time." He was bowing profusely.
Kid might have sent the man away but I had a better plan. It fit what I was doing in the Bay after all. I agreed to see them for a few minutes.
He led us to a building that stank in many ways. Half of it was injured people in various stages of wasting away after a heavy injury and no money to go to a city hospital. The other half was like an orphanage, with screaming babies and unhappy children trying to make do with little.
It was clear he was more of a volunteer here than a resident. And only on site for a few days at a time. His bags weren't even unpacked for the night.
"If you can help them, please do." His voice cracked as he spoke English to us.
Kid looked at me for direction. I pulled out a pre packed bag of t-shirts, the kind we were handing out at events. "Put these on those with injuries. They won't need them for long, and keep them here in the village clinic afterward."
Chris raised an eyebrow. "And you?"
My eyes were on the crying youngsters half watching us.
"I will do what I know how to. Change diapers."
Epilogue: Knot Me, I didn't Putappe a Fight.
ScottotheUnwise
Verified Crack (fic) Dealer
- Location
- Mulberry, Fl
Author's Note: Some of you are going to call this a fake out, a bad ending. Well, it isn't Dallas. Not a dream sequence.
Did I duck out of what should have been an epic "Last Battle"? Yessir.
Did I plan the ending this way? Well, no. The rip and darning were in there, but I wasn't expecting to feel like I'd hit the end of the scarf just yet. But the moment came and the scissors snipped the last thread after knotting together the last corner of the quilt. Some of the squares are mismatched but that only makes the whole unique and the pattern more vivid for the differences.
And I am hounded by plot bunnies.
So it is time to consider rolling the dice once more to see if they come up all fives or ones and no one screams Farkle in my ear.
Did I duck out of what should have been an epic "Last Battle"? Yessir.
Did I plan the ending this way? Well, no. The rip and darning were in there, but I wasn't expecting to feel like I'd hit the end of the scarf just yet. But the moment came and the scissors snipped the last thread after knotting together the last corner of the quilt. Some of the squares are mismatched but that only makes the whole unique and the pattern more vivid for the differences.
And I am hounded by plot bunnies.
So it is time to consider rolling the dice once more to see if they come up all fives or ones and no one screams Farkle in my ear.
Wait, what? That's... what?
No. I'm not going to call that an ending.
Because it isn't one. At all. You didn't finish this story, you just abandoned it.
It's not a band ending, because _it isn't an ending at all_. Period. At all.
- Location
- usa
It could be said that the fic had really ended once scion and all the EBs were in blanket-space and not a problem anymore, so a smidge of a retcon to hiccup away the random appearance of a new EB seems to work fine
it had been a fun ride but it did seem like the last few chapters had perhaps switched tracks a bit, so, switching back works for me
Hopefully your other plot bunnies multiply into more good stuff
it had been a fun ride but it did seem like the last few chapters had perhaps switched tracks a bit, so, switching back works for me
Hopefully your other plot bunnies multiply into more good stuff
No. It honestly wasn't any sort of ending at all.
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He
I recommend setting snare traps.
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Jonn Wolfe
(Verified Sarcastic) (Not a Wolf)
- Location
- Beyond Sanity Since 1971
I'm bummed. However, things were getting odd anyway, so this is fine. *watches the fire*
Waste of good drums. Netting would work, and be more thematically appropriate here.
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- Location
- Море песка, солнце огня и множество злых сарацин
Meh. But as the others have said, I might as well treat it as a lack of ending. At least unlike some other lack-of-an-endings I've seen this one wasn't sad (or otherwise very tragic), which counts for a lot.
I think it might be a pattern to be honest where you keep ending stories with so many plot threads left. Almost as if you like cutting them off. I wonder why...
I think it might be a pattern to be honest where you keep ending stories with so many plot threads left. Almost as if you like cutting them off. I wonder why...
Cyclone1969
Lurker
- Location
- Stockton-on-tees, UK
its like getting a crop top when you were expecting a jumper
Thank you for the words you have delivered
Thank you for the words you have delivered
NOT ME.
I'd say it's a bit unfinished as far as probably leaving out some characters undecided, but the MUSTFIGHTGRRR being absent is a GOOD thing.
Yes, this isn't Dallas (whatever that is), it's Worm.
The one franchise that ends (well, semi-ends) with the Main Character being rewarded for Saving The World with as much as two bullets in her head.
Maybe THAT is "not finishing the story correctly" instead, huh?
NOT how you did it.
Still, a more detailed (several more characters point-of-view, or something) Epilogue WOULD be appreciated.
No, it's simply and utterly unfinished. This is an author deciding not to bother with finishing their story, and papering it over with... no, actually, he didn't even bother to paper it over with a crappy epilogue.
He just didn't bother to finish it, at all.
Scottotheunwise is now on my list of 'Authors to actively avoid'.
I disagree.
Given how he had dealt away with Scion way before this point, there's hardly much what else to do in the main story to begin with, apart from more slice-of-life stuff.
And EBs.
The latter was just fixed, the former is MY complaint.
But that's THAT, really.
Oh, and Ward more or less COULDN'T happen in this AU anyways, so even that point is kinda taken care of, if passively.
To sum up:
There isn't much of the CANON story left to take care of at this point, so it's ALREADY finished in that sense.
And, well, slice-of-life is good, but an be cut short at any given point anyways.
I fully disagree with the UNFAIR amount of dislike this ending gets, really.
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Not I. Blanket is an enjoyable story. As with virtually everything I read there are parts I like more and parts I don't care for. However, the story as a while has a cohesive plot, logical powers & implications, nice character development, a lack of tragedy and horror, and a healthy romantic relationship in the end. I'm grateful for the story and impressed with nearly 400k words of good reading.
Thank you, good sir, for making my life happier.
- Location
- Georgia
Or, as Douglas Adams put it, to say a thing is impossible is merely to say that you don't know how to make it possible.
Scientists in particular are bad about declaring things impossible. When something violates the known laws of physics, the reflex is to declare that it didn't happen, when all it really means is that the "known" part is still incomplete. Look for more information, look for ways to test it, certainly, because everything we think had to come through our senses to a flawed brain, but too often, the people testing that impossibility* are mocked, derided, dismissed, and tarred forevermore with trying to prove something that everybody 'knows' is false.
*That's the only thing I agree with some Flat Earthers on; not that the Earth is flat, but that we should question our assumptions, even the ones that seem so fundamental. That there are lots of ways of testing that is why they shouldn't be certain that their version is true, but questioning it is an important part of the process.