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mindcrackloveNow I’ve done it. Here is a thing, Salad-eaters, and I know you folks love things. <3
(Don't know what's going on? -- Original Prompt Thread)
(Salad Files Member Bios - courtesy of Celeste)
~Salad ‘n’ Crackers/SaladCrack :: Mini-’crackers Fic-Snips~
As per the cyclic protocols of universes like this one, time had shifted in this world and violently, erasing everything that had been established and forcing the residents of this world to start over from scratch. In the process, Limbo had swallowed her massive orbital platform home whole, leaving her stranded in yet another world. … well, not completely stranded. She still had the means to return to where she came from on her own, but she had spent so much time among the members of this unusual nation that it felt wrong to just up and disappear for no reason other than the fact that she was feeling homesick.
Besides, she wasn’t returning to her universe of origin without proof of having chronicled this world first and secured a certain way back and forth between her home universe and here … and those tasks required her to call her home from the ethers of nothingness once again. The reagents necessary to do so were proving to be a ponderous task to acquire, however.
She didn’t worry. Being what she was, she had time; to her, this little ‘setback’ was just another short pit stop in her eons-long pilgrimage.
Sitting now in her borrowed home (a gift from the local natives after helping the hapless people in fortifying their village), she looked over the blueprints and itineraries related to her current quest, the soft light of sunrise filtering through the window above her desk politely reminding her that she had neglected to sleep yet another night. A quiet exhale could be heard as she made another attempt to cool her third mug of fresh coffee, but she set the mug down before she could take a sip.
The reason for the sudden decision to ignore her coffee was thus: a tall, dark and slender being had crept into her abode, and now it stood there towering behind her, casting its presence like a morning shadow in a silent measure to gain her attention. Its long, serpentine, gunmetal-colored tail flicked side to side with feline grace as she turned to face the mouthless obsidian-armored humanoid lizard standing beside her bed.
A silence filled with respect and familiar tenderness passed between them before the giant armored serpent spoke into her mind, a faint urgency tinging his calm and respectful telepathic baritone.
“<Beloved. I am to inform you that there has been a major disturbance in the lanes between.>”
She nodded in solemn acknowledgement to the news. “How bad is it?” came the inevitable question.
The answer was immediate and brief. “<The ripples from the tear are still being felt as we speak.>”
“Of course.” A meditative pause of silence passed as she processed the growing direness of this report. Her mind then quickly turned away from what she could not control to what she had sworn to oversee. “Will the disturbance reach this world, Guardian?”
The Guardian’s telepathic voice became even more solemn. “<Yes, sadly.>” Then a touch of hope crept into the following statement. “<… nothing you and the people of this world cannot handle, though.>” His glowing green eyes darted left and right, then he turned to leave her borrowed home, his physical presence flickering in and out of existence as he walked away. “<Expect a visitor shortly, Beloved.>”
It tore at her quietly as her Guardian’s form phased out of this world and back into the ethers of subspace. Alone again, she whispered into the air, aware he would already know her response.
“… as always.”
Not a moment later, the sound of frantic footsteps running up the gravel roads could be heard outside approaching her home. Villagers sputtered in their ‘honking’ language as a few of them were knocked aside in the visitor’s haste.
“Lioness~!!!” came the shout of a young woman; clearly she was the source of the commotion outside.
Lioness stood up and reached for her labcoat and assumed her usual calm and acutely aware demeanor. “… right on time.”
~~~~~~
Rose was thoroughly out of breath when Lioness took her inside the half-furnished house. The lack of chairs prompted the young human lady to sit down down on the plush wool carpet to rest while the older anthropomorphic lion-woman made some rose-petal tea to help soothe the messenger’s nerves.
Yes. Rose was the messenger … and she had one doozy of a story to report.
Kawa and a handful of the more influential Salad-citizens were visiting the neighboring Mindcrack nation for business reasons (and not-so-business reasons, Lioness mused to herself with a slight smirk) and they had stumbled upon a ghost town. The gentlemen that made up the Mindcrack nation were nowhere to be found when the Salad delegation had arrived. It took a concerted effort from the delegation to locate the guys, but all they had found was a bunch of kids either crying in dark corners or causing general mischief in the Town Hall.
It didn’t take long for the Salad delegates to realize that the kids in the Town Hall were the Mindcrackers. All of the guys had regressed in age dramatically with almost no explanation, and equally as mysterious was how this condition could be reversed.
“… w-we figured that since you’re like a space alien or a timelord or something …” Rose finally sputtered out as she finished the tea she was given.
Gracefully, Lioness interjected, “I wouldn’t call myself a ‘timelord’, Rose, but yes.” The anthro-lion finished her now cold coffee and set down the mug on her kitchenette counter. “Yes, there’s a good chance I might be able to help, but I need to physically assess the situation first.” She helped Rose back onto her feet. “Go on ahead of me, Rose. I’ll need a moment to gather the necessary equipment. I’ll meet you and the others at the Mindcrack Town Hall. Tell everyone there that I’m on my way, and--most importantly--to keep calm.”
Rose’s face was a study in awkward consternation. “… easier said than done, Lioness …”
~~~~~~
It was a few hours later and Lioness had finally arrived to bedlam.
To put it lightly, the Salad-citizens were having … issues adjusting to the prospect of babysitting their heroes and lovers, all of which were now stuck somewhere in the 5-to-7-year-old range and--more alarmingly, from what Lioness was told--the kids had no recollection of their lives as adults. In short, these were pure packages of boyish honesty, innocence, and mischief left in the care of a motley crew of misfits. Whether or not the situation was amusing or alarming was something Lioness privately struggled to decide on while she double-checked her datapad and the small tricorder-like device she had brought with her.
At the very least it was marginally safe inside the town hall, even if it would become a bit uncomfortable in the long run. To make things just a little bit easier on everyone, one of the Salad-citizens managed to gather enough nerve to climb up and throw some torches into the high-vaulted ceiling to prevent the more industrious hostile mobs from taking advantage of the darkness there and attacking while the ‘Crackers were stuck in their current, and very vulnerable, state. A few of the more confident fighters amongst the Salad-citizens had opted to take up guard posts near the town hall entrance to keep any lingering monsters out (and likely skirt having to babysit, Lioness pondered to herself with an internal smirk). There was some discussion amongst the remaining ‘sitters’ about moving the mini-’Crackers to someplace a little more accommodating for children, but the eventual logistics of the current situation quickly put a damper on any plans to do so.
Long story short, it was going to be a long day for everyone involved.
~~~~~~
“… 24 … 25 … … someone’s missing!” one of the younger Salad-eaters cried out.
The majority of the Salad-citizens bolted to attention at the panicked shriek. Sure enough, someone was indeed missing among the small platoon of children gathered near the meeting circle. A quick roll call later, and it was deduced that Millbee was nowhere to be seen.
A concerted effort on the present Salad-citizens was immediately undertaken to make a thorough search of the Town Hall, though it was pretty clear that there were few places for children to hide … at least none that hadn’t been figured out earlier by the Salad-citizens when the situation was first stumbled-upon.
Then, it was Thero that suggested that maybe they weren’t looking for a human kid … and no sooner did the suggestion come up, a mournful bleat could be heard coming from one of storage chests.
“Oh me word!” Pink_Sheep blurted out as she bolted for the chests.
Sure enough, after flinging open the lids of several containers, Pinky found a rainbow-colored semi-anthropomorphic lamb sitting huddled at the bottom of the large chest, his eyes wild with fear, exhaustion, and apprehension. A handful of the other Salad-citizens gathered around to confirm that the shaking little creature was indeed Millbee.
“Aw, ye poor thing,” Pinky spoke soothingly, lifting lamb!Millbee out of the box. “Ye must’ve been hiding in there fer hours.” A pause. “Come to think of it, how’d ye wind up in there?”
Lamb!Millbee only bleated mournfully in response and snuggled deeper into Pinky’s comforting arms. Nearby, mini-Anderz and Li’l Generik were kind of shuffling around, trying to sneak away.
They failed, as their escape was thwarted by the imposing form of a two-legged lioness in a labcoat. Her copper eyes stared down her snout with a maternal glare, followed by the sound of a protective growl rising in her throat. “Generiiiiik. Anderrrrz.”
Mini-Anderz, panicking, quickly blurted out: “Eet wasn’t my idea! Eet wus Genereek’s!”
Not missing a beat, Li’l Generik shoved Anderz. “No it weren’t!”
Anderz shoved back. “Wus so!”
“Waz not!”
The shoving quickly escalated into a bit-sized scuffle.
“I weren’t th’ one who shoved him!” Generik shouted.
“You dared me to!” was the little Swede’s retort.
Lioness’s paws took a firm grip on the fighting boys’ shoulders and easily pried them apart, resisting the urge to use her full feline strength to hoist the two troublemakers up off the floor and forcefully instill the the fear of god in them. “I’ve heard enough,” she growled. “I don’t care who started it or ended it, but in my eyes, both of you are in trouble … and now, you’re going to have to answer to me.”
Meanwhile, a younger boy in an orange jumpsuit and a green, Link-style stocking cap, crept up and tugged at the hem of Pink_Sheep’s shirt. “Miss Pinky?” the boy asked timidly.
“Yes, MC?” she addressed with a calm and disarming smile. Taking care of children felt a lot like taking care of the young creatures on the farm where she grew up.
“Is Millbee gonna be okay?” Little MC asked, pointing at lamb!Millbee; the rainbow-fleeced lamb had long since fallen asleep from terror-induced exhaustion.
She looked down at the little lamb in her arms. “I would think so,” came Pinky’s cautious reply. She gently shifted the lightly snoozing Millbee’s position in her arms to get one hand free and offered that hand to Little MC. “Come along now, wee one. Let’s find something for Millbee to eat when he wakes up, okay?”
Little MC hesitated for a bit, but grasped onto Pinky’s hand nonetheless. “Okay.”
~~~~~~
Seven-year-old Jason watched nervously from behind one of the chests as the strange lion-woman led Generik and Anderz away into the sunlight outside. He didn’t know what that lion-lady was doing here, and he didn’t care to find out.
“Tha’ fuzzy doctor lady is scury,” he muttered as he wandered back to the meeting circle where the other children were either napping or being occupied by their ‘babysitters’, and flopped down at the edge of the circle, idly swinging his barefooted legs in encroaching boredom.
“Ya oughta be scurred,” one of the other boys piped up, walking up behind Li’l Jason. This one was of darker hair and skin than the others and carried himself with the same self-important pride and confidence his adult self was long since characterized by. “Ah should know. Ahs seen one of her kind befer.”
Li’l Jason wasn’t buying it. He stood up from his seat and faced the other boy. “Nuh uh.”
The other boy nodded vigorously. “Yah huh.”
Still not buying it. Li’l Jason, even in his childlike state, was wise to his buddy’s shenanigans. He folded his little arms with the same authority he saw the ‘babysitters’ exercise. “I weren’t born yes’serday, Boo,” the little green-shirt retorted, surprisingly calm.
“Did so!” Li’l Johnny’s voice raised, almost indignant. The little exchange between the two boys caught the attention of a few of the younger kids; little red-shirted, green-goggled Vechs creeped up closer, motioning for the tiny (and apprehensive) pigman behind him to follow. The two were tailed by another, very curious boy wearing a trenchcoat two sizes too big for his frame and a pair of 3-D glasses that were three sizes too big for his head. Following the trenchcoat-wearing tot was a nondescript boy wearing an Indiana Jones-style hat (that was also too big for his head) and another curious child whose innocent appearance was marred by green skin and gunmetal cybernetics, giving him the appearance that he was cobbled together from spare parts from some mad scientist’s errant toy-chest.
Li’l Johnny noticed the small crowd creeping up behind Li’l Jason and smirked. He loved an audience and quickly got as melodramatic as a 6-year-old would get. “Ya got a good lookit ‘er, didn’ ya, Guude?” he addressed his green-shirted buddy, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Then ya oughta know by now that her folk are dang’rus!” Li’l Johnny took on a hunched posture and grinned a wide toothy grin. “They’re all quiet an’ sneaky an’ they’re always watchin’ … an’ waitin’. Waitin’ fer us ta be bad li’l boys …” He slowly stepped forward toward his audience, bringing up his hands, curling his fingers into claw shapes; this little display got the small group of captivated boys to step back. “You saw ‘er. Jus’ like th’ rest o’ her folk. She’s got sharp teeth an’ claws, an’ she’s mean!”
There were a couple gasps from the little audience, and another boy, dressed in a navy-blue jumpsuit, in an effort to get his gray-skinned babysitter’s attention, flail-pointed from where he was sitting toward Li’l Johnny’s direction. Meanwhile, Li’l Jason held his ground, instinctively holding out his arms to shield the younger boys from Li’l Johnny’s theatrics; yeah, Li’l Johnny’s story was getting a little scary, but …
Li’l Johnny, however, was devouring the reactions from his audience. “Generik an’ Anderz dun goofed, ‘cause if yer smart, ya don’ get her folk mad! ‘cause if ya get her mad …” he raised his hands and increased the volume of his voice into a little roar. “… she’ll eat ya!”
By now six out of the seven boys in the audience were clearly petrified, with Li’l Jason standing very protectively in front, and Li’l Johnny was loving every second of it … but so caught up was he in telling his tall tale that he didn’t notice that it wasn’t the story that froze his audience in place.
That was when a calm and chilling voice quite literally spoke into Li’l Johnny’s left ear.
“Then I bet you’d taste delicious.”
The self-satisfied, turd-eating grin on Li’l Johnny’s face quickly shifted into an expression of absolute terror. Gritting his teeth, he slowly turned his head to see the smirking leonine face of the ‘scurry lion-lady’ he had been talking about to his audience hovering right over his left shoulder.
Lioness’s smirk then turned into the same turd-eating grin Li’l Johnny was sporting seconds earlier. “… boo.”
Immediately, out came a panicked shriek--“AHMAHGAWDAHMAGONNADIIIIEOUTTAMAHWAY!”--followed by a loud tumble down the half-slabs that made the meeting circle, several gasps from the Salad-sitters, and several more amused giggles from the now not-quite-so-intimidated audience.
~~~~~~
It took him a couple seconds to register what had just happened and that the lion-lady and a few of the other babysitters were hovering worriedly over him. There were still some giggles from a few of the other boys, but he could register Li’l Jason making honest attempts at shushing them all.
The attention and the commotion didn’t negate the sting of humiliation … the only response Li’l Johnny had left in him now was to curl up into a ball at the base of the podium that was built into the middle of the meeting circle and cry, his childlike pride more bruised than his physical self.
More than anything now, he just wanted to be left alone.
“Miss Lioness?” another voice piped up nearby. “I think Bdubs is cryin’. … is he hurt?”
“… in a way, Generik,” the lion-lady’s voice spoke, genuinely concerned and totally bereft of the chilling creepiness he had heard moments before. Hearing that it was Generik talking got Johnny’s sobbing to lessen a little.
“Aren’cha gonna help ‘im?”
“I doubt he’d let me, or anyone else, touch him after that scare, dear.”
“Can I talk ta’ him?”
“Only if he’ll let you.”
The lion-lady’s presence seemed to withdraw as Li’l Johnny could register Li’l Generik creep up and poke Johnny in the shoulder. “Hey, dummy. Why ya cryin’?”
Li’l Johnny managed to uncurl himself and sat up. “… n … no reason.” He wiped his eyes and sniffled a little. After a moment, he managed to mostly compose himself. “… y’ain’t dead? I saw ya got taken outside an’ …”
The little hermit smirked. “Y’ thought we got eat’n, di’n’t ya?”
Johnny couldn’t help but nod numbly.
Li’l Generik giggled at his friend’s silent answer, but stopped giggling when Li’l Johnny shot him a very unamused look. The brown-haired, miniaturized hermit grinned disarmingly in response, missing milkteeth and all.
“Naw, Bdubs. Miss Lioness jus’ wan’ned ta talk ta us. Thas all,” Generik answered honestly and assuredly, then quickly beamed excitedly. “An’ she’s really nice! Yeah, she might be scury, but she’s the good kinda scury.”
“Ja!” piped up Anderz’s voice from over Generik’s shoulder. “Shee’s reely, reely nice! Shee eefen showed us some cool theengs an’ stuff!”
Cool things? Now Johnny was interested. “Like what?”
Before the boys could answer, Lioness’s presence returned, her semi-feline form looming above the conversation. “Johnathan,” she spoke with a gentle tone, holding out her paw in invitation. “It’s your turn.”
Li’l Johnny froze in hesitation for a moment, slightly unnerved that the lion-lady was addressing him by his formal name. He briefly looked around at the other boys that were gathering around out of innate childlike curiosity for some sort of peer advice before whispering nervously to Li’l Generik: “… should I?”
“Yeah! Yeah!” Generik quietly encouraged. “Anderz an’ me are okay, so you should be okay, too!”
Anderz only nodded vigorously in confirmation.
No more reassurance was needed after that. Li’l Johnny, bruised confidence now bolstered by and anchored to his friends, stood up and took the lioness’s paw-hand and was led outside into the sun.
~~~~~~
“Yer … not really gonna eat me … are ya?” Johnny finally managed to squeak out as Lioness quietly directed him to sit down on the steps just outside of the Town Hall.
Lioness seemed to have been expecting the question as she unlocked her datapad. “No,” she answered calmly. She shot the boy a motherly smile. “… what gave you the idea that I ever did?”
Li’l Johnny shuffled in his makeshift seat uncomfortably, then answered honestly: “Yer a lion. Lions eat folks.” He paused, now very uncertain of his assumptions of her, given the very gentle and civilized nature of the lion-lady taking care of him. “… right?”
“Not all the time.” came the answer, graceful and matter-of-fact.
The answer alarmed the child slightly. “… S-So you do?”
There was a pause and a faint grimace of pained recollection on Lioness’s face for a split second … a split second that wasn’t lost on the child. “Only if I have to,” she answered, solemnly as she reactivated the tricorder-like temporal examination device and calibrated it to the standard preset she had recorded onto her datapad. Lioness changed the subject momentarily. “Hold out your hands like this, Johnathan,” she instructed, holding out her paws palm-side up.
Johnny complied to the instructions in the latter statement, but didn’t seem convinced about the information in the former. “… do you have to now?” he asked as the labcoat-wearing feline inspected his hands and squirmed a bit as she lightly pressed a couple paw-padded fingers onto his forehead.
Lioness didn’t suppress a genuine chuckle as she gently applied pressure to his right wrist with her free hand. “No.”
“… so … ah’m safe?” the child asked as Lioness pulled away to input her observations into her datapad.
“Safe …” She only shook her head slightly, finished typing in her notes, and picked up the temporal examiner with one paw. “I said nothing about ‘safe’, Johnathan. … but I am a good person and I will always be.” Lioness sat down next to the nervous child, smiled that motherly smile, and ruffled his dark hair reassuringly with her free paw. “I expect you to grow up to be the same.”
That statement seemed to be enough assurance for the boy, and he smiled in response, calm and confident once again.
“… okay.”
~~~~~~
Meanwhile, inside the Town Hall, lamb!Millbee had just woken up and was immediately being an absolute handful.
He had wolfed down the carrots MC had helped Pinky find, and now the rainbow-fleeced anthro-lamb had slipped Pinky’s watch and grasp, running loose and skipping and kicking about inside the Town Hall, as well as randomly, playfully, and literally butting his head into the other childrens’ business.
For example, Little Beef had been unceremoniously knocked over into a tangle with an ill-timed, lamb-powered headbutt while play-wrestling with Pause. The event had left the two boys flailing about in a confused panic as Millbee bleated and scampered away in triumph. Rose found herself sputtering audibly while trying to decide if she should berate the retreating mini-sheep or help the bewildered youngsters that were assigned to her out of their predicament.
Slender Celeste was kneeling on the floor helping Kurt and Zisteau clean a mess of clay and little wooden cubes off the floor (it was a pretty-looking mess, though … Little Zisteau still had the extravagant creativity of his adult self; something Celeste adored about her adoptive father when he wasn’t … being a piglet) when the rainbow lambkin scampered up her back and perched on her shoulders with a jubilant ‘baaa!’
This elicited a very amused chuckle from the rainbow-haired Celeste.
“Even so small, you never change, do you, Millbee?” she chided playfully over her shoulder, careful not to knock the lamb off its perch. “You’re still very naughty and you always want to be on top.”
Milbee looked very proud of himself, the hidden meaning of Celeste’s sideways quip flying right over his lamb-y head. “Baaa!” he bleated happily before leaping off with all his fleecy grace … and promptly bowled over a very confused Kurt with a random headbutt before scampering away, completely oblivious to the distraught squealing his playfulness had elicited from the little pigman Kurt had been in the midst of befriending.
Lioness had brought Li’l Johnny back inside after running a couple discreet tests, and the boy had since scampered off to tell his buddies about the ‘cool stuff’ the lion-lady had shown and taught him. The labcoat-wearing lioness smiled slightly as she looked around the room to once again assess the current state of events and to pick out who was next in line for observation … when her train of thought was interrupted by something nibbling on her tail.
A pair of glittering and mischievous eyes looked up at Lioness when she turned to confirm what it was that had her tail-tuft in its mouth. The lion-lady couldn’t suppress a chuckle as a playful bleat escaped lamb!Millbee’s throat, the little lambkin letting go of Lioness’s tail-tuft in an attempt to scamper away again. … an attempt thwarted by the lion-lady’s feline reflexes. In one swift move, Lioness scooped up the impish little lambkin into her arms, gently adjusting her grip as little Millbee squirmed, kicked, and bleated in an instinctive attempt to get away. The sheep of this world only feared wolves since they were for all intents and purposes the only natural predators here, the lion-woman contemplated to herself quietly, but perhaps there were lingering ancient impulses that could still detect the presence of a natural (and foreign) predator. Sadly, that was not something Lioness could bring herself to test … not to anyone in the state these once-grown men were currently stuck in at least.
“Aye! Lioness! Good timing. Whew. Ye caught him!” a clearly out of breath voice caught up to Lioness and the squirming lambkin she was holding onto.
“Hello, Miss Pinky,” the lion-woman greeted as serenely as she could manage with a squirming lambkin in her arms. She couldn’t help but chuckle at what the scene might have looked like to a third party. “I take it Millbee has been keeping you on your toes?”
“Don’t ye know it … thanks for catching him fer me, lass.”
“Not a problem.” Lioness shifted her grip a little. “Just as well we caught him, though. I still need to run some tests on the rest of the boys to see if my suspicions are correct … mind giving me a hand while I do that for Millbee, Miss Pinky? I’ll also see if I can rig a harness for him while we’re outside.”
Pinky shrugged, then nodded. “Sounds like a plan tae me. … but only if ye just call me Pinky.”
Lioness smirked. “Of course, Pinky.”
Millbee, meanwhile, squirmed again in quiet protest as he was being carried outside. He apparently didn’t like the prospect of whatever it was these two babysitters were talking about or were about to do … and what they were going to have to do.
~~~~~~
==A few hours of simple tests later…==
Lioness returned inside the Town Hall with the last child to be tested sleeping in her arms. Li’l Jason was clearly exhausted, having fallen asleep right in the middle of Lioness’s last test, and the encroaching nightfall made carrying him back inside a necessity. The Salad-citizens were looking up from their weary (and wearying) charges with hopeful glances, and the serene and confident expression on Lioness’s feline face seemed to bring a measure of much-needed relief into the already uncomfortable situation.
The lion-woman found the woollen mat the Salad-citizens had pieced together to serve as a sort of makeshift bed for the more tired kidlings and set Li’l Jason in the space between a snoozing Pause and half-awake Li’l Johnny. Jason squirmed a bit as he was laid down and immediately curled up close to Johnny instinctively for warmth before starting to snore lightly. Johnny looked really uncomfortable for a moment, but was too tired to protest, muttering something about ponies before falling into a deep sleep as well.
Her hands finally free, Lioness set down her datapad and the temporal examiner on top of a storage-chest-turned-makeshift-lunch-table and sat down on the one of half-slab seats that formed the meeting circle with a relaxed sigh of her own.
“I’ve got some good news, everyone,” she finally announced. The declaration quickly got the interests of the still lucid Salad-citizens.
Kawa, after helping Celeste bed down Zisteau, walked up and took a seat on the edge of the central podium. “Good news?” the leader of the Salad nation asked, genuinely relieved and curious at the same time. “Do tell.”
The lion-woman glanced around, noting all the sleeping and the more well-behaved children being settled down for the night before turning her attention toward the gathering Salad-citizens and their leader before finally settling down to give the news.
“To be brief, the situation the guys are currently in isn’t at all permanent,” Lioness finally spoke to the gathered crew of caretakers trickling into the half-slab seats that comprised the meeting circle's bowl. A collective sigh of relief was heard all around the Town Hall. Lioness continued her report. “As I suspected, their condition is tied to a small disturbance in the multiverse that I had been recently notified of; said disturbance having set off something of a ripple effect in temporal space around several universes--including this one.” She raised her pointer finger in a universal gesture of silence, followed by a carefully metered pause. “… please don’t ask how I know about what’s going on outside of this world, you dear lot, and I’d rather that all of you not dwell on that question.”
“… fair enough,” Kawa responded for the group. She took a moment to shift her position. “Did you figure out how to return them back to normal?”
“This is a matter of the temporal we’re dealing with, Miss Kawa,” Lioness answered in full honesty. “From my own experiences, Time generally resolves itself if things are out of place, like how it is now.”
Another metered pause.
“I hear a ‘but’ at the end of that statement, Lioness …” Kawa replied, her tone now tinged with concern.
“… there is, indeed, a caveat when dealing with temporal resolution,” Lioness confessed with a heavy sigh. “Yes, time does resolve itself, but this is time we are dealing with here, after all. … and for time for resolve itself, it generally … well … takes time.”
The silence in the town hall was palpable.
“How long do we have to wait, then?” the leader of the Salad nation finally asked.
“At best, we can expect the gentlemen to return to normal come morning,” the lion-woman responded without missing a beat.
“… and at worst?”
“A week, and that’s being hopeful.”
There were a few quiet invectives breathed out (and some not so quiet) but the distress the Salad-citizens were expressing seemed to fly clear over the heads of the still (but barely) awake kidlings under their care.
Lioness simply closed her eyes in meditation. “All I can advise you to do now is hope for the best and prepare for the worst. This is only a temporary situation … it will pass.”
… and perhaps when it does, they, too, will learn to cherish fleeting moments like this …
~~~||~~~
==…daybreak/an indeterminate amount of time later…==
“Ow.”
“Merciful Matt Damon …”
“Ugh.”
“… my head.”
“What the hell happened?”
“… helvetes jävlar …”
“Who spiked the beer?”
“Why’s the inside of my Town Hall a frikkin’ mess?!”
“Why am I tied up?”
“… where’d all these sleepin’ girls come from?”
“Wha--? Girls? … wow, guy. You’re right. Uh …”
“They all look exhausted.”
“… we must’ve had one helluva party.”
“I dunno about that. I didn’t wake up wearing a traffic cone.”
*snrk* “Dammit, Baj …”
~~~||~~~
The events of this story are (obviously) seen mostly only from Lioness’s perspective (and I really, really apologize if I got some Salad-characterizations wrong in the process...) However, I’m not going to stop you from writing (or at least suggesting) what’s going on from your characters’ perspectives in the same timeframe as this series of fic-snips. I’d love to see what you happy lot can come with! :3
(Kiddycrack ftw?)
<3
~Lioness
- fanfiction,
- former mindcracker: bdubs,
- former mindcracker: genny,
- former mindcracker: paul soares,
- mindcracker: anderzel,
- mindcracker: baj,
- mindcracker: beef,
- mindcracker: doc,
- mindcracker: guude,
- mindcracker: kurt,
- mindcracker: mc,
- mindcracker: millbee,
- mindcracker: pakratt,
- mindcracker: pause,
- mindcracker: vetches,
- mindcracker: zistykins,
- primers,
- prompts,
- saladcrack
no subject
Date: Saturday, August 17th, 2013 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, August 17th, 2013 02:27 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: Saturday, August 17th, 2013 04:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, August 17th, 2013 07:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Saturday, August 17th, 2013 08:34 pm (UTC)Oh lord, please tell that was Vechs. xD
Hmm... it seems I'm getting nothing done today, I'll be writing my own Mini-'Crackers.
Lioness you are a genius. <3
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Date: Saturday, August 17th, 2013 08:59 pm (UTC)im seriously just squee-ing over here because of baby Orange Wool and baby OOG.
(also i totally want to be the one to give etho and doc some redstone and have them build some spectacular creation)
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Date: Saturday, August 17th, 2013 10:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, August 18th, 2013 03:35 pm (UTC)I really lurvs this! :D I wonder who said what at the end? 'Matt Damon'. Is that a reference to someone/anybody? Because, I dunno...
Traffic cone! :D
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Date: Monday, August 19th, 2013 01:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, August 19th, 2013 01:51 am (UTC)Also, good call on who to have me interact with. <3
Would have liked to see a bit of toddler!Pakratt, but this seems like it was getting out of hand with just those that you included, so I'm happy with what I did get.
Thank you for including me! <333