Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

And so, after a protracted journey across the galaxy with his friends, Universal President Zaphod retired to his official quarters, where he conducted his last great act – a universe-wide orgy – before becoming ‘one with the whole galaxy’ ten years later after a terrific sandwich, four glasses of orange soda and a Peanut Butter Double Explosion Bar With Extra Nuts. (1)

1: There are rumors that Zaphod’s orgy only consisted of two Venusians, six linebackers from Darwin University, and a very happy duck. Those rumors were snuffed out over the centuries, and modern day historians declare any such heresy to be untrue and ‘totally uncool’.

Chapter Text

Coated in plaster dust and spitting chunks of detritus, Annie Knowby slipped back into the waking world. Comprehension slammed into her like a runaway train.

Annie collected herself, shoving back an overturned research table, taking stock of the wreckage that was once one of the world’s top research libraries. Her friend was nowhere to be found. “Evelyn!” she shouted, clambering over upturned chairs and crumpled maps.

“Annie?” The younger woman jerked her head toward the sound of her mentor’s voice – and saw the petite head librarian perched upon a bookshelf, the Dagger of Prince Ak-Tuh-Sin clutched in one fist and the decapitated head of a mummy held in the other.

She pitched this toward Annie like a fastball, and it shattered like a clay doll upon the ground. “I take it you’ve seen these creatures before?” she asked, hoisting a ladder toward Evie’s hiding nook.

Missus O’Connell gave Annie a genteel smile, taking the offered ladder and shimmying to the ground with the speed of a woman half her age. “Did I ever tell you about the trip my brother and I took to Thebes?” she asked upon reaching the floor.

That tale was just the tipping point of a very fascinating evening.

Chapter Text

They’ve forgotten the worth of me, she said. They lean on the unnatural; the plastic and the handmade. How they’ve ignored the call of their past, the secret sweet ache of their childhood desires. They shed their green youths as I fled Apollo, rooting me in chaste permanence.

But I’m still here, frozen in the midst of my departure, hands thrown heavenward, Diana’s name still on my honeyed lips. I have sheltered thousands, given oxygen to an infinite number of green things in the millennia hence.

They have forgotten the worth of me, but I would not take back those years. I am worth nothing to them, but this nurturing means everything to me.

Chapter Text

“So Mary,” said Counselor Kruger as he closed his manila folder, “I understand you want to switch your major from accounting to dream therapy. Could you tell me why you’d like to do that?”

“Well, like, I want to be a doctor, and I don’t’ want to have one of those icky cubicles, and then it hit me – celebrities need dream therapists! So I figured this would be a primo way to nail a really super rich actor! Like Prince! But way taller!”

Freddy rubbed his grotesque, rubbery scars and groaned. It was going to be a hell of a winter semester at Springwood College.

He didn’t realize he’d kept his quip to himself until he opened his eyes and saw Mary staring at him, twisting her hair about her forefinger and snapping at a cheekfull of Bubble Yum.

He liked her. He’d kill her last…during the faculty vs students dodgeball meet.

Chapter Text

“Shawn, what are you doing?” Gus hung his head over his best friend’s shoulder, trying to prod the mystery of the cube Shawn held tight in his eager grip.

“This, my brilliant loaf of brilliant dudery, is the Rubix Cube Xtreme,” Shawn said, twisting and turning the sides, trying to match the stark lines of red, blue and yellow.

“There’s a serial killer on the loose and you’re sitting in here playing around with a puzzle box! Your priorities are…so…” Gus raised an eyebrow. “What makes it extreme?”

Shawn never lifted his eyes from the cube. “It glows in the dark. Want a turn?”

Gus’ had already extended his hand. “You bet your ass I want a turn.”

Chapter Text

“..So then,” Susan said, her ebony locks glimmering brightly enough to outdo the starlight, “I defeated the Klingons with my bare hands. They’re going to commission a ship for me, the S.S. Sparkle, tomorrow. But! Here’s my problem – Spock and Scotty AND Kirk have all asked to take me to the dedication ceremony, and I can’t decide which one of them to take! That’s why I decided to ask you, Christine; you’re so much wiser and, well, OLDER than me…”

“I’d help you out,” Christine Chapel said, “but that would mean believing you. And I’m not ready to take that step yet.”

Sue jumped to her feet, pouting adorably. “You just earned yourself a demotion from best friend to evil romantic rival!”

Christine sighed as Sue left the room, trailing glitter and the scent of sun-blessed strawberries. It definitely wouldn’t be the first time.

Chapter Text

When the child fell asleep, they stirred, rose, convened in the middle of the bedroom. “Uhhhmm, did you see that guy?” Cheryl asked.

“Who?” Cyril asked, wiping his red nose (it turns out he was rather allergic to plastic). “No, wait – do you mean Julie’s father?”

Cheryl let out a purring squeak, a disturbing sound from an oversized child-shaped doll. “The guy with the perfectly trimmed beard, and those nice, strong hands…”

“Oh dear God.” Mallory’s plastic hands barely gripped the tiny custom-made cocktail straw that swirled about her glass of. “How would you even seduce him?”

“I don’t know, but he’s a TOTAL sploosh.”

“Do you ever NOT sploosh these days?” Pam wondered. Four plastic heads swiveled in her direction. “What? Every time Julie sticks a cup in her mouth, she pees her pants!”

Chapter Text

Fionn Glenanne is the most impatient man in the universe. Though Samantha supposed he had a right to be; it’s not every day somebody crosses the globe just to stake out the hospital room of an ex-lover.

“I don’t believe Mikey made you her emergency contact.”

Fion sat taller in the ’s jaw clicked as it settled back into a glower. “So what’s the next move Samantha?” he said.

Sam gritted her teeth against the man’s disdain. “We take out the guys who did this to Mikey…and we make them pay.”

Fion cracked a smile. “I think I’m going to like you.”

He ate those words a few hours later, as they crashed through a swamp in the heart of the everglades, trying to outrun an alligator.

It was the beginning of an odd – but pretty wonderful – friendship.

Chapter Text

Jo idly stirred the surface of her coffee with the tip of her finger. Under her dulled gaze rainbows formed and dissolved on the surfaced, trailing bright strands of light in its wake. The ocean seemed to bubble beneath her touch. She smiled at the silly thought, this brief presumption of omnipotence that signified no real power, just a wish, a fantasy. For a moment she imagined walking away from the dust and grime of the city, piling onto a train and riding it until she saw the blue hills of her Massachusetts home.

But downstairs she heard the child cough, and sighed, setting aside the earthenware mug. It was time to leave the small pleasures of life behind, and work her way to redemption.

Chapter Text

They lay hunched in a group on her nightstand. Pale, soft, well-worn and marked over with stitches and stains. Just one glance and she was transported back to the afternoon she’d picked them up at that yard sale. It had been something of a minor miracle that she’d discovered them at the bottom of that cardboard box. One she was forever grateful to God for creating in her name. Without her Manger Babies she would have never found her true voice. Luane knew she would have never ended up with Gracie, and would never be as happy as she is today.

Chapter Text

“You ain’t the easy to kill kind, are ya?”

Ash squatted by the mouse hole, listening to his former hand chitter within the secrecy of the wall. It moved from the sound of his voice, tripping over its fingertips to get away from him.

“Aww, don’t be shy,” Ash coaxed. “I’ve got some cheese for ya!” His face formed a brief rictus of pain before he forced his features into a parody of a grin. “Yeah, plenty of cheese!”

A questioning sound before the tip of a ragged, green, transformed nail emerged.

Ash threw himself toward the chittering creature, banging his head against the rocker on the way down, and the chase began again.

Chapter Text

Laverne was fairly certain that she wasn't going to make it to the podium the day of her graduation. She'd had a D+ in everything but gym her last year of school, a testament to the fact that she and the rest of the Debs had discovered boys during their sophomore year.

-But the second Shirley found out about her friend's low-ranking GPA, she spent the entire summer vacation before their senior year drilling Laverne on math, science, literature and history. All of her efforts were met with grudging acceptance, and it dragged Laverne's average up to a solid C by the end of the year.

She had her best friend to thank for everything as she smiled and took the sheepskin with a grin, officially becoming the first America-born DeFazio to graduate high school. And she knew it.

Chapter Text

Pinkie Pie totally knew what she was doing when she helped Pumpkin and Pound bake their very first batch of cookies. A little bit of salt, a little bit of flour and soda, a little more butter and sugar and eggs and chunks of chocolate and poof! There would be yummy cookies for everyone to eat

What Pinkie ended up with was a platter of burnt cookies, a kitchen covered in drying splotches of dough that smelled quite distinctly of smoke, two whining foals, and a dessert that consisted of premixed pudding.

“Next time,” she pled, slumping face-down into the bright pink pudding, “I’ll bake and you can watch, okay guys?”

The twins chattered their approval, but Pinkie was already out like a light.

Chapter Text

I was born in a small hospital in central Springfield in the year 1984. My first word was my brother’s name, a fitting turn of events, for we would become lifelong allies and rivals.

This is just the beginning of my story, and my long struggle against bourgeois capitalist fascist underpinnings of society. Only two things would remain consistent over the many years yet to come: I would be inexorably linked to my family and thus to the irradiated soil of Springfield no matter where I roamed, and that no matter where I ran to, no place in the world was quite like home.

Chapter Text

“Merchandise!”

The word rang out over the heads of the drunken saloon patrons as they slid, dusty and trail-weary, into plates of warmed over slop. But the words had a new weight to them, and they were smart enough to turn Jim toward the man uttering them.

They were being spoken by a guy with dark hair wearing a cheap suit. The glint in his eyes as Jim approached reminded him of his old boss Mel – and like Mel didn’t seem particularly trustworthy, but he definitely had ideas.

“Merchandise?” he asked, leaning in.

He grinned and tipped back his green hat. “We’ll start with Blazing Saddles: the Home Game and go from there.”

Chapter Text

“HUMANS.”

Zeus’ eyebrow wobbled at Hera’s exclamation. “What have they done now?”

Her settled herself stiffly onto a divan and started shoveling down a bowlful of ambrosia. “They’ve been worshipping Aphrodite nonstop for months. Half the population’s pregnant!”

“Sounds like it’s about time for a good plague to thin out the herd,” groaned Zeus. “I’ll get on it after lunch.”

Hera glared at him. “You always jump to the most dramatic solution. Why not give them all donkey ears for a month? That ought to cool them off.”

“Whatever you say, dear,” he declared, and turned back to his bowl of souvlaki.

Chapter Text

They say a pixie never forgets her first human. And Tinker Bell still remembers the tall, dark-haired man who was her first friend many years after she met him. His stiff skin and well-sculpted hair told her he was a fellow of great distinction and wit, the sort who would be a real fly-by-night kind of guy. Too bad he was more interested in taking a mud bath at Mermaid Lagoon instead of dueling with Hook or adventuring with the Lost Boys.

But Tinker Bell never did forget the cowboy.

He’d been entertaining. And he had only one flaw - he refused to stop talking about the snake in his boot.

Chapter Text

Bonnie’s mother has told her more than once to have fun but not to hurt the figures clutched so eagerly in her chubby fist. They’re older, she says, and are built to last. Why, once upon a time she’d had a cowgirl figure just like the one Bonnie sent riding to the rescue of her cowboy doll. She’d been from the same show, and even had the same hat. She even fits the same way against her fingers when they play together.

Years later, Bonnie’s the one who points out the childish scrawl hidden within the brim of Jessie’s hat – her mother’s name, bold and true - completing the circle and reuniting child and toy after years of separation.

Chapter Text

They say that when the forty foot gingerbread men came to Metropolis that only a handful of super heroes had the cunning, spirit, and forethought to prepare to defeat them. Some called it madness, but the Justice League called for a halt to all aggression but whatever they could provide. With Wayne Industries at the forefront and every single superteam in the metropolitan area on high alert, they were certain to wage a successful battle against the incoming gumdrop-emblazoned troops before the sun hit the sky’s midpoint.

None of them know that it would be a war that would consume humanity itself.

Chapter Text

Shirley carefully lined up her possessions as she prepared to dig up her first real garden. A yellow-handled trowel and shovel sat beside two packs of gerbera daisy seeds and four bundles of tulip bulbs that needed to be dug in deep and true by early May. There was a rich bag of soil sitting beside her and several terra cotta colored pots ready to be stuffed full of sprouts.

It was a mark of her love of organization – and that organization had taken the place of closeness and camaraderie she’d had with Laverne. She had gotten what she wanted - the house, the collie, and the baby – but in the end she had also received another, unwanted gift. Loneliness.

Chapter Text

Maybe she has too many shoes.

There’s the pair of espadrilles in the back of her closet with gray straps and four inch heels that she only wears when she wants to seem learned and elegant.

There are flats with nubby, worn-off velveteen toes that seem too tweedy for business meetings but nevertheless are always worn when she has to play corporate waif.

There are four pairs of Keds with moth worn laces, filthy with mud, that she’s only worn in this presence. Those are the ones that should meet with a dumpster, become one with the trash.

She doesn’t know. She needs a second opinion she won’t ask for – because he’s never noticed her shoes.

Chapter Text

It’s really very simple, actually.

Everything runs on steam power. All that’s needed is enough energy to run the bellows, to keep everything chugging along. The steam pushes the joints, the joints pivot on lockpins, the joints squeezed shut and release the steam. It’s the modern equivalent of a water wheel combined with the power of leverage and all of the automation of something fresh off a New York assembly line. Pretty fancy, if I do say so myself.

What does it do? Fellas, can’t you tell? You’re looking at the world’s first steam-powered steam-engined whoopee cushion!

Hey! Where are you going?

Chapter Text

It’s not like he means to be bad. It’s just that it isn’t easy to trust those delightful ponies. They had been so kind to him at first…but in the end they hadn’t been enough to keep him from the temptation to do evil.

Even that adorable Fluttershy.

Discord will, however, insist to his dying day that he’s only SOMEWHAT wicked. Why, he never had the guidance a growing magical dragon entity needs to keep him on the straight and narrow! He’s simply so impressionable that the wrong crowd is just as good a crowd as a completely wicked one.

Chapter Text

There are thirty-thousand words for peace in the human dialect. Unfortunately for Michael Westen, he’s intimately acquainted with all of them.

He’s hung from a building by a bedsheet shouting them, and he’s said them with a smile while shaking a warlord’s hand. He’s repeated them with feigned surprise and he’s shouted them with both hands in the air. He’s said them holding a gun and while pointing the barrel at another man. He’s handed out poisoned drinks having spoken it like a benevolent blessing, and he’s shouted them during manic high speed chases.

The true measure of a spy’s success isn’t making peace. It’s providing the illusion of it.

Chapter Text

Never ask Pinkie Pie what her favorite flavor of cake is. That is, unless you want a debate that involves a recitation of hundreds of different combinations of frosting and base cake, or you want to debate the worth of fondant versus pure buttercream. Pinkie’s preferences involve everything – big gumdrops and fancy script shells, deep-fried pastry crème bouches and plain, old, regular hand-made layer cakes.

Don't get her started on cookies. Cookies with their raisins, chocolate bits and nuts had even MORE opportunity for variety. There’s a benefit to adoring it. She’s got as many options are there are colors in a crayon box when she wants to play. Yummy, delicious crayons.

Not real crayons of course. Beeswax is an acquired taste.

She knows that from experience.