CHAPTER TWO: SIFTING THROUGH PIECES OF BROKEN HOURGLASS
The house, as it sits in the middle of a ruined city, is unsurprisingly low on food. Nightwalker says he and the others have been trying to loot the other buildings, but they’ve mostly found spoiled produce or crushed canned goods.
“We got one less mouth to feed, at least.” Jake watches in mild fascination as the Orphaner Dualscar, sitting cross-legged on the backyard g...
2024-03-28 12:59:57 +0000 UTC View Post“What do you mean you don’t know where Dirk is?!”
The guy who’s introduced himself as the Autoresponder lifts a shoulder, barely turning back as he continues down the ruined street. He said he and the others have found a house to stay in — a favorable thing since what Jake has seen of the city is apparently status quo.
What in god’s name has happened to New York?
“I wasn’t here,” the Autoresponder says.
“Where were you, then?”
The g...
2024-02-23 09:54:02 +0000 UTC View PostCronus Ampora is on the floor of his living room.
The fireplace is dark, but his skin is heated. Warmth envelopes his whole body, and his eyelids barely lift when he tries to open his eyes. To his right, bright light streams through the windows; with the curtains pulled aside, the light bleaches the room white, rendering the comfy browns and honeyed tones of his home dead and sterile.
Fingers brush a curl of hair away from his ear, the action alerting him to the low humming that...
2023-12-30 00:07:02 +0000 UTC View Post#16: ALL THINGS END by HOZIER
It takes less than twelve hours for the house to turn into a warzone. By the end of the day, Dirk has dumped the whole salt shaker into his older self’s food while his older self has discreetly sprinkled crushed jalapenos into his, resulting in one person throwing up several times and the other trying to chug as much milk as he can straight out the carton. By the end of the week, they’ve looted Three’s &n...
2023-07-21 08:52:48 +0000 UTC View Post#15: KING by LAUREN AQUILINA
One grounds the older Dirk on the first floor and the younger one on the second floor. Neither of them can go anywhere other than their specific floor, and if either of them break quarantine, M has permission to disembowel the offender.
The First Guardian immediately appears after they say that, a sudden presence over the god’s shoulder. The man’s usual frown is nowhere to be seen tonight, his ex...
2023-07-14 05:15:53 +0000 UTC View Post#14: DESERT SONG by MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE
The hallway stretches as far as Dirk can see, disappearing into the darkness ahead. There are no doors or windows in the narrow space, only plain cement walls and a concrete floor. There are no lights overhead, but he can still see the direct space in front of him. When he turns, there is nothing but a plain empty wall behind him.
There’s only one way forward. Dirk stays right where he is.
He doesn’t know how long ...
2023-07-07 04:05:32 +0000 UTC View Post#11: ABSINTHE by IDKHOW
27 HOURS AGO
Something has caught him.
Davesprite freezes in mid-air where the wind has cushioned his fall. Above him is the angry, pulsing tear in the sky that he's fallen through, and below him is miles and miles and miles of meadow. That would have hurt. He might have been a bird and a sprite with the ability to fly, but being hurtled down at breakneck speeds by something invisible pulling at his midriff h...
2023-06-16 07:34:02 +0000 UTC View Post#10: GOLDEN BY FALL OUT BOY
The First Guardian blips into existence at the breakfast table unprompted. Everyone flinches in surprise, because how the hell else do you react to that?
Three scoots his chair closer to Dirk’s; he continues eating but every now and then, he glances to where the Guardian is, standing at the head of the table next to an empty seat.
“Are you gonna eat or what?” One asks, hair all over the place and dark circles under their eye...
2023-06-08 05:52:14 +0000 UTC View Post#08: SEDATED by HOZIER
They go right back to rearranging the archives when they go back home. As interesting as it has been to see Kisaragi, sometimes it's too much too fast, and the holidays nearing isn't helping much. Even Kisaragi has Halloween, as removed as it is from Earth's history, which is surprising, but given how passionate Three is about figuring out his species' history, it makes sense.
The holidays mean Three has no excuse ducking his friends and fam...
2023-06-01 09:47:45 +0000 UTC View Post#08: NO PLAN by HOZIER
They stay at the hot springs for two more days before they return to One’s, and then another day there before Dirk and Three go home. The First Guardian does not show up again (although One says their phone is filled with text messages from him that almost break character limit), and the rest of the mini-vacation is violence-free.
It’s strange that Dirk can check off vacation from his bucket list now. He went on a hike ...
2023-05-22 06:41:42 +0000 UTC View Post#07: SO GOOD RIGHT NOW by FALL OUT BOY
They have a visitor in the morning.
The First Guardian is an imposing figure standing in the middle of the living room. Dirk spots him on his way towards the stairs. How long he’s been there, Dirk doesn’t know.
The man’s radiation green eyes slide over to him and narrow. Faint green sparks coil around his fingertips. Dirk wisely does not move, but the Guardian does not do anything else. Instead he just looks strai...
2023-05-22 06:40:51 +0000 UTC View Post#06: NORTHERN DOWNPOUR by PANIC! AT THE DISCO
He goes to bed sometime around dawn and only gets a few hours of sleep. Despite Hal constantly scaring him as he works, the soul does not explode or shatter or disappear. It looks like it's made of glass, but the needle and thread sew through it fine, and by the end, he has fingers smudged with blood and an intact patchwork sphere.
Hal shows him how to put it back into place, lowering it into the wounded wrist where it...
2023-05-03 03:43:52 +0000 UTC View Post#05: THE KINTSUGI KID (TEN YEARS) by FALL OUT BOY
Three sews runes into the inside of his coat to make it responsive to temperature and keep its wearer warm. Then, they fly at top speed north, following the coast until the air gets colder and the winds more biting.
And then, as far as the eye can see, ice sheets. There are a few specks below, white and furry and moving, that Dirk soon realizes are polar bears, animals he's only seen in photos and were lon...
2023-05-01 05:09:18 +0000 UTC View Post#04: IT'S ALRIGHT by MOTHER MOTHER
Three quietly slips out of the room while Dave comforts his little brother. This isn't his business, this is private, and so he steps out into the hallway to let them have some time. He can't feel any disturbance in Dirk's continuity, only on Dave's – a timeloop to be closed – so this is a fine overlapping stitch into the tapestry of time.
He sits down and leans back against the wall, absen...
2023-04-28 07:15:55 +0000 UTC View Post#03: MEDICINE by DAUGHTER
The scanner arrives a week later, in perfect condition. Dirk immediately takes it apart in his room (the office is liable for fires) and reassembles it so it's structured like a loom. He ends up pausing the project when he needs more parts, flying around Kisaragi to fetch what he can and running Three's credit card online when he can't find them.
The familiar work is meditative, a comfort and an easy thing to fall back on...
2023-04-25 06:19:09 +0000 UTC View Post#02: DAWN by CIRCUS-P
They don't talk about the incident after, or the days following. Dirk is more than happy to let it pass, save for Three's passing comment about him drifting. Obviously, having fought another version of himself, the god had to have some additional knowledge about how a Prince of Heart's magic worked that Dirk wasn't aware of. His time at the island had not discussed anything about drifting, but considering they were planning an offensive-dependent b...
2023-04-25 06:17:21 +0000 UTC View Post#04: HOW VILLAINS ARE MADE by MADALEN DUKE
Seven lets her roam the city, giving her a phone and a number to call him in case she gets lost, though with his apartment being at the tallest floor of the tallest building of Hatsune-shi, that shouldn’t be a problem. She wanders the streets until it gets dark, until the noise of the busy city life falls away, until it’s only her in a darkened sidewalk, heading for a dimly-lit bridge that goes over a shallow river.
N...
2023-03-23 03:31:06 +0000 UTC View PostINTERMISSION - KISARAGI MIXTAPES - SIDE A: DAMARA MEGIDO
#03: (IT’S NOT ABOUT) RUNNING by TUVABAND
Despite the late hour, the city is alive with sound and light. Neon signs of pink and blue scream advertisements at Damara everywhere, traffic lights flash, a festival of sensory overload. Seven lowers his hood but keeps his glasses on, leading Damara to a plaza with the city map. How helpful for maps to be commonplace here.
The little infogr...
2023-03-06 05:14:53 +0000 UTC View Post#02: HOME IS JUST A STATE OF MIND by ROD LADGROVE
Seven lives in Hatsune city. The only god residing in the living world, despite the fact that his older brother Three should be with him. When Damara points this out, he shrugs, running a hand through his hair.
"Three's a shut-in," he says. "Doesn't necessarily dislike people, just not very enthusiastic about meeting them."
"You said he's hosting Strider."
"I think he's ju...
2023-02-15 07:44:54 +0000 UTC View PostTHE KISARAGI MIXTAPES (INTERMISSION)
SIDE A: DAMARA MEGIDO
#01: PAPER CROWN by ALEC BENJAMIN
What does a cornered animal do?
Pit against a wall with nowhere else to go and all of its attempts to fight back easily swatted aside, what does it turn to? It hisses, thrashes, throws all caution to the wind as it digs deep into whatever strength and desperation it can muster. Whatever it can push its body to do, it will.
<... 2023-01-24 07:28:23 +0000 UTC View PostEPILOGUE
“For real? You actually killed her?”
Sapphrel Angeles sighed, far more dramatic than they needed to be so Eridan could clock that this was an insincere, exaggerated reaction, and proceeded to slump over their dining table. He clicked his tongue, unamused, crossing his arms as he observed them. A perpetual liar indeed, even down to their emotions. He wondered if they were ever honest, if they ever let their guard down, or if William took all the sincer...
2022-12-05 05:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: I WILL FOLLOW YOU INTO THE DARK
They could not afford to let her fly. Eridan only had a few minutes, and Anshu’s body was a sprite. If she managed to take to the air, then it was all over.
So Eridan, despite the pain and way his body screamed, gritted his teeth, and let William force his muscles and bones to comply. He sprinted forward in top speed, the blur of a predator, an orphaner, hunting down prey, and narrowly missed Jaeger j...
2022-12-05 04:59:01 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL
“Manifest.”
Eridan’s eyes snapped open, jolting awake as if he’d been electrocuted. He sat up and began to frantically pat down his chest, trying to see if his heart had been ripped out of him but…there was nothing. In fact, his clothes were pristine, cleaner and fresher than anything he’d worn in the past few weeks, free of gore or blood, both his and not. The heaviness around his eyes had disappeared. His...
2022-11-28 03:45:44 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: HONEY, BELIEVE ME, I’LL HAVE YOUR HEART ON A PLATTER
???
They ended up having to duck behind a building, blocks away from their original drop-off point. Cronus wrenched himself away Hal, who had grabbed onto his shirt and was effectively strangling him with his collar; Dualscar pulled away from Nightwalker and braced himself again a wall, disoriented from such fast teleportation; and Karkat immediately ran into the nearest ...
2022-11-22 03:03:19 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY SIX: YOU SAID YOU’D LOVE ME FOREVER
FEBRUARY 1, 2014
NIGHT VALE
Between Karkat, Meenah, a strange adult’s arrival from a completely other planet and Dualscar’s awakening, it had been shaping up to be quite an eventful day. The surprises kept piling up, it seemed, as in the early hours of February 1, 2014, Hal Strider finally awoke, and stumbled downstairs right in the middle of everyone trying to catch e...
2022-11-17 02:25:04 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: TELL ME YOU LOVE ME
JANUARY 31, 2014
NIGHT VALE
Dualscar awoke, slowly, to an unfamiliar ceiling, in an unfamiliar bed. While in any other situation, he would have immediately gotten up and checked his surroundings for danger, he would that his vision was blurry and littered with pinpricks of static, and every breath felt like heaving in fire. He recognized the beginnings of a fever, which meant that his...
2022-11-10 06:04:32 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: DON’T YOU FEEL LIKE IT’S BEEN FOREVER
THE LAND OF SNOW AND STARS
Aradia’s ancestor was terrifying.
After Karkat had given up on arguing with Kankri for something as stupid as how shitty their blood was, he’d attempted to break away from the rest of the crowd and march out the door. The human-looking adult, Aethra or something, had tried to block his way, saying something about him needing rest and more food. Kark...
2022-11-04 05:28:10 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: NOBODY BELIEVES YOU NOW
The coast of Florida was flooding.
It had to happen someday, but for it to be minutes after the entire state had gone into a statewide blackout wasn’t what most people expected. The doomsday preppers, of course, already had Carrington Event Two Electric Boogaloo and Noah’s Flood on their bingo cards, but the rest of the general population were left baffled to see that the ocean had stopped being s...
2022-10-29 03:09:09 +0000 UTC View PostCHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: NOBODY BELIEVES YOU NOW
The coast of Florida was flooding.
It had to happen someday, but for it to be minutes after the entire state had gone into a statewide blackout wasn’t what most people expected. The doomsday preppers, of course, already had Carrington Event Two Electric Boogaloo and Noah’s Flood on their bingo cards, but the rest of the general population were left baffled to see that the ocean had stopped being s...
2022-10-17 05:33:56 +0000 UTC View Post