[attr="class","icon"]

“I rather think it everything around that shouldn’t dismiss me,” Fox said with a small shrug, pushing silky black hair off his shoulder.
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Lars’ response had his mouth quirking up, ever so slightly. Under the mask, his eyes shifted to look at the Head Ranger.
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“How articulate of you. You should quit policing and become a poet.”

Phage popped forward in a burst of light. “Protect, on me,” Fox ordered, charging forward towards the seam of pink gas. The prismatic protect bubble formed up over the two of them as he launched himself through the air-- the dream gas, which is what he suspected this was-- roiled and pressed against the rounded edge of the protect-- as he landed on the other side, boots sliding.

He fell a bit, fingertips dragging along the ground, pushing him back up to standing as he fell back in step next to Lars.

“We should go,” he said, having to lift his voice over the noise of the gas, rushing out like a waterfall. He reached out and fixed his gloved hand around Lars’ forearm, squeezing. “We shouldn’t get separated.”

A tall figure in a white lab coat materalized out of the mist beyond Lars and stepped forward.

“Lock,” the figment said, smiling.

Laurence Anderson
stretch of the imagination

☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]“Here’s an option for you,” Fox shot back, in a rushed whisper-shout that was coupled with him rising up off the wall a few inches. “just don’t fuckin’ smoke!”

He pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “For fucks’ sake.”

Lars gave him a lecture about bringing people in alive. Fox sighed, a measured exhale.

“Fine. I get it. Just-- what’s the plan?”

[attr="class","samknoxt"]
boxing bouncers
Laurence Anderson

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉

[attr="class","icon"]

Fox paused, a minute halting of his motion, chin tilted out. The idea of carrying a whole family on your shoulders… the span of his own ached at the thought.
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But that would be playing too many cards, too soon.
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“I’m certain,” he said, voice hollowed out, “you’re the only person who has felt that way, ever, at all, in the history of all the worlds.”
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And he tosses his hair as though he’d never paused in the first place.
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“What would you call it, then? Perhaps a crown?”

They weren’t friends. They didn’t share secrets, industry, personal or otherwise; and Fox was far from gossiping like a giggling schoolgirl.

But Lars had been… different, ever since they came back from the Deep Sea the first time when Fox had pulled him back from the edge of the abyss.

Fox licks his lips, tilts his head.

“I think it’s already here,” he said, voice quiet in the gloom. He was calm, and alert but not panicked, and he hoped Lars could be counted on to remain the same.

There was a distant noise, like roaring, and the ground pitched. Fox jumped as a seam opened in the earth beneath his feet, hitting the ground in a forward roll and whirling at the end of it to look back at Lars.

Geysers of pink fog shot forth from within the ground, hissing ominously as everything between Fox and Lars became covered in a thin sheen of pink glitter.

Laurence Anderson
stretch of the imagination

☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]Fox rolled his eyes, let some of the tension bleed out of his body. He stood up, back sliding against grimy brick.

“Yes, mammy, I can throw a punch,” he said, feeling the grind in his neck as he really leaned into the drama of the eye roll, his tone scathing. “Can you kick that horrible oral fixation?”

His nostrils flared as he exhaled, collecting himself.

“You’re my lead,” he said, in answer to the second question. It would, admittedly, be hard, to subject himself to the whims of the Head Ranger. But this wasn’t about pride, or a stupid pissing contest. “I’ll do what you say.”

[attr="class","samknoxt"]
boxing bouncers
Laurence Anderson

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉