Chapter Text
Your baby’s hooting in the backseat, snuggled up with a dead possum you threw in your SkaiaNet Portable Sterilizator the minute it became clear he was too attached to leave it on the roadside where you found it. You’re stretched out in the front seats, boots kicked up on the passenger side dashboard and hair wound up into a straggled grey bun, your earpiece in and your voice down low: the wind rattles through the pipes of the jeep and leaves in blazing orange whip against the windscreen, swirling and churning in a late fall storm.
i got ninety nine problem and that bitch is all of them, you mutter, and your message encrypts and recrypts and decrypts and moments later there’s a laugh at the other end and her voice echoes back, tinny and stifled:
You seem entangled in girl problems; and it’s unquestionable fact that I feel bad for you, son.
dont even TALK to me about girl problems lalonde
Destruction of a universe, mindwipe of a civilization, ruthless undercutting of an otherwise entirely affordable range of bathroom suite furnishings.
I’ve written to Cosmo, but as yet they’ve no advice to offer us.
Your staff don’t know you’re running but your allies do, and where the two coincide you’re making arrangements for the future.
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One night you wrap yourself in a fleecy Manthro Chaps blanket, and you settle down in a grassy clearing on the mountainside and livestream the sunset to your friends. Bec curls up warm and heavy beside you, his tail whisking idly across your knees; from his breathing you think he might be napping, but it’s awfully hard to tell sometimes, given he doesn’t have eyes to shut.
The projection from your lunchtop flickers grainily in the darkening sky before you, and the sea reflects a vivid blood red all the way to the horizon.
EB: jade, holy shit, i am pretty sure nature is not meant to look that terrifying even if you DO live on a completely ridiculous island in the middle of nowhere.
TG: fucking hell youre a woman of steel to face this doomsday vision every night without shitting your pants
TG: (if youre currently shitting your pants dont tell me pls i wanna live in ignorance)
TT: I must say, I never realized quite how far down the gaping maw of Armageddon your island was situated until now.
GG: told you so!!!
A cacophony of infuriated voices bursts from your speakers, and you laugh, and you snuggle down into Bec, and you wake up several hours later as the dawn’s smearing up across the sky in a kind of pale and anxious pink, and your friends are still there and still talking and when you explain that you didn’t mean to fall asleep they complain and they tease you, and you think about how you’re all gonna be together soon and you squeeze Bec so hard he disappears in protest for a moment. sorry buddy, you say, and he nuzzles your nose with his in forgiveness.
You love your island, but you sure can’t wait for the world to end!