Reuby’s Intro, Day 0, 9:07
Reuby had settled onto the couch–which was obviously black–to watch her favorite anime, when Hornet Needle (by the way, I appreciate the Hollow Knight reference in Hornet Needle’s name) had barged in. Reuby thought this was rude, but at least Hornet Needle (from now on I shall mostly use the nickname Hornet, because I don’t feel like typing out a name that is a whole one word longer, and because Hornet is a great name for a dragonfly, because it makes absolutely no sense to call a dragonfly after another insect, and therefore it is perfect) was black and red, of which Reuby approved.

Reuby had just finished filling out her scroll with elegant swooping handwriting, and she rolled the scroll back up and stuck the seal back on, and placed it in front of Hornet where the dragonfly was perched on the couch. Hornet gave it a sniff (with an audible sniffing noise), then sat there, tilted their head at Reuby, as if to say ‘Humph. I don’t want to take your scroll, not now that you’ve gone and rubbed your nasty human hands all over it.’

Reuby sighed. “Are you gonna take the scroll or not?”

The dragonfly sighed back, or at least made a sighing noise, and daintily munched the scroll piece by piece. Reuby didn’t think that dragonflies normally ate scrolls but weirder things had happened. Hornet, with another sigh, flitted off the couch and flew off a few feet, then paused a few feet off and hovered, clearly waiting for Reuby to get up and follow.

So Reuby did. And Hornet flew to the other side of the room, Reuby still following, and landed on the ear of Reuby’s large black wolf, Wiccan. Wiccan didn’t like this, and flicked his ear, throwing Hornet off, and then tried to snap Hornet out of the air (he missed, thankfully. I’d be rather annoyed if I had to send a new one), which wasn’t very nice of him. Reuby didn’t think this was very nice of Wiccan, and neither did Hornet apparently, because the little insect hissed in fury and bit Wiccan. Reuby hadn’t known dragonflies could bite, but apparently they could (this is actually true for all dragonflies as far as google tells me, and not just the special ones that I created for my own purposes).

Anyways, Reuby assumed that this meant Hornet wanted her to mount Wiccan, so she ran and threw her stuff into her red-and-black backpack and jumped onto his back. Hornet exited the room, fluttered into the hallway, and hovered impatiently next to the door. Reuby bent over from Wiccan’s back, twisted the doorknob, and flicked the door open. Wiccan trotted out and Reuby leaned over again and pulled it closed behind them. Then she turned and faced forwards, looking at the wisteria fields, which were especially beautiful today. Hornet flew off at a steady pace and Wiccan followed the dragonfly, his powerful wolfy muscles undulating beneath her. As they wove between the wisterias, Reuby glanced back at the cozy black cottage that was her home for the last time…

That last sentence definitely wasn’t foreshadowing. Foreshadowing? Who said anything about that? Certainly not me. Ahem. Anyways…

Reuby looked out over the fields, at the beautiful trees with their draping purple flower-things. The early morning sun glanced off of them, making them seem to glow. Flower and other foliage grew in the underbrush, ivy wound over the branches, and moss grew on the shady tree trunks like a beard in need of shaving. Most of the trees were giant, their squat trunks multiple feet wide and perfect for climbing. Some were so large they required supportive structures to help hold up their giant branches. Every now and then a tree house could be spotted perched in the branches, built by Reuby and her many AEs over the many summers Reuby had lived here.

Reuby turned to face forwards and gave a start. There was a portal, hanging in midair, maybe 20 feet ahead. Reuby had been looking off to the side and hadn’t seen it, but now she inspected it closely. It was maybe a foot above the ground and deep black, blacker than anything she had ever seen, with streaks of colors that were impossible to describe. It seemed to suck in light, stealing it away never to be seen again. It was a void. They steadily approached, Wiccan padding forwards. Hornet didn’t slow at all as they neared it, flying closer and closer until, with a little zap of light, the dragonfly disappeared into the portal. Wiccan glanced over his shoulder at Reuby, shrugged, and leaped through after Hornet. There was a blinding flash of bright light, so bright it didn’t have a color, just blinding brightness, and then the sensation of falling up. And suddenly they were on solid ground again. Reuby’s vision was still blue-green-black from the flash, but she could feel Wiccan beneath her again, and hear a cacophony of noise, and her vision was already clearing. She blinked a few times and it cleared all the way.

She gasped. They were in a vibrant forest, bustling with wildlife. Everything was making noise, buzzing and hissing and muttering and chirping to itself and its surroundings. A snake flickered through the trees. A bird flew overhead. A bug fluttered by. Hang on a sec…? Was that a Spotted Lanternfly?

You see, Reuby, just like everyone else so far, was ecologically (still not totally sure that’s a word. But google spell check isn’t giving me any problems about it, sooooo…) aware, and she was not going to let any nasty buggy wuggies mess up a beautiful forest like this. She swung off of Wiccan, intent on catching it, but Hornet beat her to it, grabbing the bug out of the air and ripping off one of its wings, then proceeding to kill it the rest of the way. Satisfied, the dragonfly settled onto Wiccan’s back to eat their catch. Reuby made a noise of disgust but let it slide, studying her surroundings more. Some of those trees looked great for climbing…

“Great,” she said, “What do we do now?”

Hornet gave no reply, just crunched on a leg of the Spotted Lanternfly. Reuby shrugged. Welp, since there was nothing else to do, she would climb a tree. Always a worthy use of time.

Wiccan settled down and put his head on his paws, Hornet still on his back, as Reuby heaved herself into a tree with a grunt. Wiccan and Hornet seemed to be getting along together. Reuby clambered higher, looking out through the forest.

And then she heard a far-off scream, getting steadily louder. And louder. And louder. So loud it almost seemed like-
~~~

Hint - If you reread the end of Sterling's intro, you'll find it's very similar to Reuby's.

Heh heh, I kept accidentally spelling "Reuby" as "Rueby." But I fixed it thanks to a handy Ctrl + H on my google docs. So don't worry, it's all spelled correctly now.

According to my list, Ultamatium is up next. I am hoping hoping hoping to have Ultamatium's part out by Monday but life is super busy right now and it might be super late like Reuby's was.

I know intros are not as interesting as the main parts, so I'm gonna try to get through them fast and get three done next week, but like I said, life is super busy right now. Some of the intros might not be the best quality (like Eirian's. I didn't have a ton of time on that one and it is my opinion that it turned out to be really weird, sorry 'bout that, Eirian), but I'll try to get through them as quickly as I can while sacrificing as little quality as possible.

Anyways, I'm looking forwards to getting Ultamatiums intro out. It should be fun.

Ultimatum’s Intro, Day 0, possibly 9:00, but also maybe 11:12
You’d think that somebody who had five pocket watches would always be on time. Unfortunately, the contrary was true. Ultimatium did have five, but only one of them actually worked. As for the others, one of them didn’t function at all (it was stuck on the time of 9:00, and will be for all eternity), one went backwards, one went forwards but too fast, and one did whatever it liked. And when I say whatever it liked, I mean whatever it liked. Such as sprouting legs and a mustache and doing the hokey-pokey.

This was all very problematic, as Ultimatium’s largest fear was running out of time. In fact, the whole reason he had bought five pocket watches was to keep track of time. Unfortunately, the shady antiques shop that he had bought them from, which claimed they magically kept track of time and were never off, so far seemed to be living up to the adjective “shady.” Plus, they all looked very similar (aside from the one with legs and a mustache), so it was difficult to tell which one was the one that actually kept track properly and which ones were not.

As a matter of fact, the antiques shop was not shady, but Ultimatium didn’t know this. The shop had been telling the absolute truth when it said they magically kept track of time and were never off. The thing was that only one of them kept track of time the way Ultimatium expected. The other four kept track of time in different ways, but kept track of time nonetheless.

All of the pocket watches had names. The one that worked was Bob, the one that didn’t work was Bobby, the one that went backwards was Bert, the one that went forwards too fast was Bart, and the one with legs and a mustache that did whatever it liked was Bartholemew, Barth for short. Barth was Ultimatium’s favorite (despite not keeping track of time in the way Ultimatium expected), and it was a good thing all the others weren’t sentient because otherwise they would have very quickly developed an inferiority complex.

I have now spent four paragraphs explaining Ultimatium’s pocketwatches. Explaining it was very fun, and also very unimportant. Actually, it might be very important. We’ll see. Anyways, all this was to say that when Ultimatium looked at his pocket watch and saw that the time was 9:00, he was looking at the one that didn’t work at all. The one that actually worked was lying partially buried under a pile of sand on his dresser, and it read 11:12.

One thing you should know was that Serendipity was a dragonfly who took his time. He had departed from the Scuttling Place, with all the rest of my dragonflies, at 8:59, and was supposed to arrive at 9:00. However, he had arrived at 11:05, after taking 97 detours, 96 of which were to various McDonalds all across the globe.

Another thing you should know was that Ultimatium’s alarm clock had broken after the steadily leaking sand had gotten into its circuits.

A third thing–no wait, second thing–no wait, third thing you should know is that it was very difficult to tell what was the window in Ultimatium’s home, which was the lower half of an hourglass (ugh. Ultimatium had tried to plug up the hole with a cork but sand kept leaking out and covering everything), for the walls were all made of glass. So Serendipity had spent another seven minutes after arriving trying to figure out where he should tap, for I had given all of the dragonflies specific instructions to tap on the window to get the attention of the recipients. It was no longer raining (I had called off the rain a few moments after all of the other CBers had received their scrolls, because it is much easier to summon magical trains when it isn’t raining), but Serendipity was distressed, because he was late, and Scuttles would not like that, not one bit, so finally he settled for just tapping on the nearest glass surface.

A fourth thing you should know was that due to the broken alarm clock, when Serendipity tapped on the window/wall/whatever at 11:12, Ultimatium was deeply asleep, until he wasn’t. The sharp taps woke him up, and he bolted awake, brushed sand off of his bed and out of his hair, and grabbed the nearest pocketwatch to check the time. Of course, as we have already covered, it was the wrong one.

The tapping came again, and Ultimatium looked around in confusion a bit, and then spotted the dragonfly.

Ultimatium frowned. Obviously the dragonfly wanted to get in, and he wasn’t one to leave a poor dragonfly outside, but as we mentioned above, he was in the bottom half of an hourglass. Now, I don’t know about your hourglasses, but mine generally don’t have windows or doors or any access points in them. So he shrugged and punched a hole in the glass. The dragonfly entered through the hole with an annoyed buzzing noise, settled down on the sand-covered dresser, and vomited up the scroll.

Now, we already know what happens next, so I’ll keep it short. Serendipity vomited up the scroll, Ultimatium filled it out and granted Serendipity the lovely name he has now, Serendipity ate the scroll, Ultimatium packed his things (in a nice, mysterious-looking satchel), punched a larger, Ultimatium-sized hole in the glass, and left his hourglass behind.

Also, Ultimatium, are you aware that the word “ultimatum” doesn’t have two “i”s in it? Only one. It is rather annoying, as now I’ve had to add “ultimatium,” “ultimatium’s,” and “ultimatium-sized” to my personal dictionary. Now when I go to type the real word someday, I’ll misspell it and I’ll never know because google spell check won’t tell me. It is incredibly infuriating and unforgivable (nah, just kidding. It’s not that bad).

Outside of the hourglass, everything was bright and new, la di da, we’ve done this four times already, I don’t feel like doing it again, so use your imagination. The hourglass happened to be located at the top of a skyscraper in a busy city. The wind was feeling rather excitable today, and it howled by, whipping his black robe around.

And now, for our customary sighting of a Spotted Lanternfly. While Ultimatium was looking around his rooftop and trying to figure out how to get down, he happened to spot a Spotted Lanternfly (spot a Spotted Lanternfly, haha, get it? Yes, dumb jokes galore). And so he stomped on it. Squish-crunch-dead.

Hmm. The wind was feeling very strong today. Serendipity was busy trying to not get blown away, so Ultimatium took the chance to explore for a way down. As he was looking over the edge, a particularly strong gust came along and blew him right over the edge.

“AAAAAaaaaAaaAAaaaaaAAAAaaAAaaahhhhhhHHHhHHhhhh!”

Ultimatium squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for impact. I took that opportunity to send him back in time until it was actually 9:00, because I happen to know that Ultimatium hates being late and just because his dragonfly was late doesn’t mean he should be. Before his eyes, or rather, before his eyelids, cars zipped backwards down the street, people walked backwards down the sidewalk. Ultimatium didn’t see any of this. Obviously. Because his eyes were closed.

Instead, Ultimatium felt the wind rushing past, his long black hair and long black robe whipping around. If he somehow survived this, he’d have a nasty mess of tangles to brush back out of his hair. Why was he worrying about his hair? He shouldn’t be worrying about his hair. He should be worrying about quickly becoming a splat-crunch-dead, just like that Spotted Lanternfly he squished. In fact, he was so busy worrying about being worried that he hadn’t noticed the wind had stopped. But now he did. His eyes flicked open. He was suspended three or four feet above the ground. But instead of black asphalt, the ground was filled with greenery.

The other thing Ultimatium hadn't seen while his eyes were shut was that he had been teleported. One moment he had been plummeting towards the city, the chain around his wrist clanking loudly. The next he had been plummeting towards the rainforest floor, the chain around his wrist still clanking loudly. And then he had somehow come to a stop, a few feet above the ground, the chain around his wrist no longer clanking loudly.

And then whatever magical force was holding him above the ground gave out and dropped him to the ground with an oof. He rolled over and sat up and rubbed his now-bruised nose. Couldn’t the magic have lowered him gently? But Ultimatium was well acquainted with magic and knew that wasn’t how it worked.

Serendipity was buzzing happily nearby. Ultimatium gave him a glare (how come Serendipity didn’t have to faceplant onto the ground? Unfair), and checked one of his pocketwatches (the correct one this time). It read 9:03. How curious. He could have sworn it had been much longer since he had last checked his pocketwatch but after all, time flies when you’re having fun. He shrugged, and gathered his things, which had fallen out of his satchel. Before putting his twine and knife back in, he cut a short length of twine and tied back his hair into a lumpy ponytail. Readjusting his glasses, he gave a nod of satisfaction, and clambered to his feet.

He took in his surroundings. He was indeed in a forest. There was a constant background noise of water dripping off plants and birds chirping and animals scuttling. How interesting. Ultimatium shrugged and set about exploring.

~~~

That was indeed fun but also a bit of a word vomit.  Some of that might not make grammatical sense. If you see any typos, chalk it up to me being intentionally illogical, and not, ya know, making a mistake...

I wasn't expecting to be able to get this out today. I'm a little proud of that. I beleive Silver Crystal and her AE, Topaz, are up next. Silver Crystal's should be out by next Wednesday at the latest.

Wow. That intro was, needless to say... unexpected? The exact level of humor that fits into the whole story seamlessly, gosh! Perfection. I cracked up so many times while reading it.

Also, 'Ultimatium' was actually spelled like that on purpose, sorry Scuttles. I put the 'i' there because I wanted to distinguish it from the word itself (and that I liked the little spiking sound at the end)... sorrrrrrrrrrry about that.

I'm apologizing so much these days, dear me.

And I'm very hyped for this to continue! Take your time with the parts, don't get too stressed over everything.

haha I need to work on this. I totally lack motivation, though, but I'll definetely have the next part out by Friday. And my "definetely" I mean probably not.

Failing the CAPTCHA

Literally halfway through Silver's intro I realized Topaz lives with Silver and now I have to rewrite most of the part. ._.

(Not your fault, Silver. My bad for not reading it more thoroughly. I should prolly have known that most people's AEs would live with them. Seriously, not your fault.)

Sorry for not getting Silver's part out for the last 1-and-a-half-weeks. Life is kinda sorta really insane right now. It should be out soon-ish.

Silver Crystal’s Intro, Day 0, 9:00
Silver’s alarm clock went off at precisely 9:00 AM. Unfortunately, it was one of those radio alarm clocks, which wakes you up to a radio station, and the station it was on just happened to be playing country music, which she hated.

She groaned and dragged herself out of bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes, and hit the off button on the alarm clock. Nothing happened. The affront to humanity also known as country music continued to play. After one too many times of being blearily jabbed in the wee hours of the morning, the button had stopped working. Silver frowned and hit the button again. Still nothing. Silver hit it one more time. Country music continued to pour from the speakers. Finally Silver gave up, and holding the alarm clock at arms length, crossed her apartment, opened the window, and chucked the alarm clock out. It fell thirty-something stories and shattered into a billion pieces on the rain-soaked concrete sidewalk below. Glancing down to make sure nobody had been hit and nobody had seen her, she closed the window with the feeling of a job well done.

What she didn't know is that thirty-something stories below her, lying on the concrete sidewalk, the busted alarm clock continued to faintly play country music. Alas, it seems that no matter how hard you try, there is no way to rid the world of country music.

Throwing the alarm clock was a rare outburst for Silver, and now that she was a little more awake and a little more rational she began to regret it.  Darn it. She'd have to buy another new alarm clock.

Now, dear reader, as you already know, it was about now that the dragonfly arrived. Trixie (who wasn't Trixie yet, because Silver hadn’t filled out the scroll and named our dragonfly friend yet) was rather in a hurry, as flying in the rain made our little dragonfly friend stressed. Trixie smacked into the glass quite harder than the little dragonfly meant to, and when Silver cracked open the window, Trixie was lying still on the sill. At first Silver thought the dragonfly was dead, and she reached out and picked it up, setting the poor thing gently on her dresser. But Trixie awakened in a few moments, and eager to make up for the few moments of time that had been lost while Trixie was unconscious, the dragonfly immediately vomited up the scroll before Silver even realized the little insect was awake. This gave Silver quite the start, and after some thorough inspection she carefully opened the scroll. It exploded in a poof of glitter and gave her another little scare.

Silver carefully read the scroll, then contemplated the pros and cons of going with a dragonfly to someplace called “the Scuttling Place” for a moment. Finally she decided a little adventure never hurt anybody. She would go. So she filled out the scroll and gave it to Trixie, who liquefied it into a little puddle on Silver’s bedroom floor, and then drank it with audible slurping noises. This was probably a rash decision, as those scrolls were legally binding (although the legality of making it legally binding was somewhat dubious, as there's some law somewhere that says we need to tell you what you're agreeing to before you sign a legally binding contract, but who cares), and most likely a decision she would come to regret. But there's no going back now…

At this point she decided it was a good idea to tell Topaz, her AE, that she was going to go with a strange dragonfly to a strange resort where it was always Summer. She slipped out of her bedroom and knocked on Topaz’s door across the hall. There was no response, so Silver checked in the kitchen. On the table there was a note that read:

“We’re out of whole milk. Going to the store to pick some more up. Be back soon! <3 Topaz”

So Silver wrote her own note, which read:

“This strange dragonfly showed up and vomited up an invitation to this weird resort, so I’m going with it. Might be gone for a while! See you! <3 Silver”

Silver slipped back into the bedroom, where she made Trixie go into the bathroom so she could change out of her PJs in private. Trixie was slightly annoyed at the inconvenience but allowed it. Silver quickly pulled on a white-silver long sleeve shirt and jeans, then opened the bathroom door and let Trixie out. She stuffed her notebook, pencils, camera, and compass into a fashionable cross-body satchel-thingy and faced Trixie.

"Alrighty. I'm ready."

Trixie turned and zipped out the bedroom door, down the hallway and into the kitchen, without looking back. Sterling kinda stood there staring for a moment and then her brain caught up to the fact that the dragonfly had left. She started out of her reverie and raced after the dragonfly.

By the time she reached the kitchen, Trixie was hovering next to the door, with something dangling from the dragonfly's clutches.

"Are those… my car keys?"

Trixie just hovered there, so Silver reached out to take the car keys from the little dragonfly's eight legs. Wait a sec–eight legs? That wasn't right. Dragonflies had six legs. Something wasn't right about this dragonfly. Silver's brain took a moment to realize that the dragonfly had vomited up a scroll that was over ten times larger than it, so obviously this was an odd dragonfly. Trixie made a little annoyed buzzing noise, and Silver realized she was just standing there with her hand outstretched, a few inches from the dragonfly. She shrugged, stopped staring, and grabbed the keys.

Trixie made a sound that seemed to be a noise of satisfaction and turned to face the door. So Silver opened the door and stepped out. Trixie zipped out after her and immediately flew off.

“Hey! Wait up a sec!” Silver called after the little dragonfly, exasperated. She hurried to lock the door behind her and then chased after Trixie down the hallway of the apartment building.

Trixie was waiting for her at the top of the stairwell. After Silver caught up with the dragonfly, Trixie immediately turned and zipped down the stairs, not even waiting for Silver to catch her breath. The dragonfly was not only faster than Silver to begin with, but also didn’t have to go round and round the stairs. Trixie just plummeted down the middle of the stairwell. Silver threw her hands up. This dragonfly was impossible. But then, since there wasn’t anything else to do, she raced down the stairs as fast as she could. Trixie was waiting for her at the bottom, next to the doors that led to the parking garage, wearing what could only be described as a bored look on the insect’s face.

Silver, who was fed up with Trixie, made a rude gesture, and then crossed the lobby and shoved open the door. She had a feeling she knew exactly where they were going next, and headed for her car. She pulled open the door and clambered into the driver’s seat. Trixie zipped in behind her and settled on the dashboard.

“Alrighty. Where to?” asked Silver, who was in a somewhat better mood now that Trixie couldn’t outrun her.

Trixie gestured with a leg towards the parking garage exit with a look that said we have to leave the garage before we go anywhere, duh. Silver rolled her eyes, but turned on the engine and backed out of the parking space. Meanwhile, Trixie lifted off the dashboard and hovered in front of the little screen embedded in the control panel. The screen was surprisingly not only touch-sensitive but also apparently dragonfly-leg-thing sensitive. In a moment, Trixie had pulled up the navigation and entered a destination. Silver read it aloud.

“Trader Joe’s? Why are we going there?”

~~~

Turns out I didn't actually have to rewrite most of Silver's part, just had to send Topaz off to pick up milk. Their part will be fun. I've always wanted to write about somebody getting abducted by a dragonfly at Trader Joe's.