#background tho

Just for this thing I redesigned and rewrote some of the Kalos rivals cause canon is only canon if I look at it-

(Positive kalos rivals energy to clean the soul and the pokemon masters villain arc)

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“They’re freaking pumpkins,” Puck groans. “I mean, look at them!”

“They’re not that big,” Sabrina says. She tries to keep it from sounding dismissive. Puck is sharing this with her, after all. His gender is one of the things that she’s pretty sure she can’t tease him about. One of the real things, the things that would hurt him truly.

In the past few months, Puck’s body has gone through some kind of fairy double-puberty. He’s growing a beard, which he seems to love, but he’s also growing, as Granny has put it, ‘a substantial front porch.’ He hadn’t seemed super excited to explain it to Sabrina, but from what she can gather, this is, if not normal for fairies, not as uncommon as it is among humans.

"Draco Malfoy had squared with the fact that he rarely succeeded in things at first. His whole life could be read as a series of failures that eventually became successes.

It was no surprise then, in retrospect, that he had failed to become an animagus not once, but twice before finally succeeding.”

This is a story about failure and understanding, about success and honesty, and about two idiots in love trying to solve two very different mysteries - brought together through a series of chance encounters in the highland forests.

His whole life Remus Sanchez had been told the same thing over and over again:

“Why can’t you act more normal?”

The unstated “-like your brother” was also always a part of that statement, but no one was going to admit that.

In theory behaving the way people wanted him to should have been easy, just don’t say and do everything that pops into your head. But for Remus it just didn’t work like that. Why lie about loving horror and gore or disliking someone or something? Remus thought what he thought, and his parents and teachers and every other adult in his life wishing he wouldn’t was not going to change that.

So while Roman dazzled and awed, made friends like it was nothing, Remus sat at home reading It and watching American Horror Story alone night after night. And he was fine with that! I mean, who really needed people to confide to in their life...

Until one day Remus’ parents asked him to go pick up Roman from his boyfriend, Virgil Dante’s, house. And then Remus met Janus Dante.

Who looked the opposite of normal.

Even without his yellow eye practically glowing in every room he entered and the large birthmark covering half his face, Janus still made an impact. When he first started talking with Remus he was dressed like a Gravity Falls character. How was Remus supposed to resist asking for his number? And when he showed up to their coffee date wearing an actual cloak, Remus felt not embarrassment but joy.

Who acted the opposite of normal.

Janus always seemed one step ahead of everything. He didn’t bother with pleasantries, with hiding how he felt. Each word he said was beautiful crafted, an art form shared to the world that Remus was delighted to hear over late night phone calls and Wendy’s burgers. Janus was just unapologetically Janus, free from the fear that who he was wasn’t enough, and god did Remus crave that validation too.

Who made Remus feel the opposite of normal.

Janus listened to Remus. He took all of Remus’ demented ramblings and looked beyond their direct meaning. Their conversations managed to block out the world that was so critical of Remus to begin with, that made him feel less than human. Janus made him feel MORE than human; like he was something magical and beautiful. Alive.

Remus loved to look at Janus. Look for the little things like Janus’s rosy glow after their first kiss. Remus always remembered the details and soon came to a conclusion.

If Janus was the opposite of normal, maybe normal wasn’t as good as everyone made it out to be.

Lup didn’t roll great on her stealth check, but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that she was a public nuisance – nice – and got back at her twin friend during his hot date. He might have laughed at her when she made the mistake of mentioning the fact that she thought the Red Robe had a cool voice, but she was the one to press her face up against the glass window of the Chug ‘n Squeeze and call him out on his goth predilections.

Taako was on a date with the actual grim reaper, he didn’t get to poke fun at her maybe thinking that a lich was pretty cool.

He had turned bright red and flipped her off, prestidigitating a shower of sparks right in front of her face as she laughed. Oh, the night was only just beginning.

As she watched, though – and plotted, because never let it be said that she didn’t plot – something in her gut twisted strangely. Taako actually seemed like he was cutting loose and having fun which, good for him, but he seemed...relaxed was the closest word that she could figure. His hat was placed on the stool next to him, and his shoulders were eased, and if he bumped into Kravitz with a grin his expression was so soft. 

Lup frowned and wandered off because the fun of spying on her brother’s friend’s date had been strangely soured, and she ended up sitting against a tree on the quad. It was somewhere that Davenport sometimes sat, and even though he wasn’t there she still found it comforting all the same.

She had come up to the moon because she had been promised that she wouldn’t be alone, and she wasn’t. She was friends with Carey and Killian, and she had started to break down the walls that Madam Director had up, and Magnus and Merle were goofs but they were her friends. Taako, though, the two of them fit together in a way that she hadn’t ever experienced in her short life, and something felt strange watching him be that open with someone that he had known for maximum two hours.

Lup hadn’t known Taako for that long, but it felt like most of her remembered life anyway, and jealousy was an ugly emotion but maybe she was jealous. Her magic was simmering under her skin, antsy and powerful in a way that she didn’t have spells for, but she tamped that down as best she could. She wanted to be a nuisance, sure, but she didn’t want to ruin Taako’s date.

Speaking of, she watched Taako and Kravitz walk onto the quad, holding hands under the light of the real moon. Kravitz turned, and he was suddenly holding both of Taako’s hands as they just looked at each other, and before they could get any further Lup slunk back in the shadows a little more and snapped her fingers, and a tiny beam of flame raced along the grass until it caught the edge of the Reaper’s cloak. 

Even from where she was, she could hear his voice and- well, that was a different accent, but hey, Taako always could pick ‘em weird. (She didn’t know where that thought came from, or why the word “always” felt so right) “I feel something-”

“I feel it too,” Taako cut in, and Lup could hear his grin, but Kravitz shook his head.

“No, it’s not that- I mean, yes, but also is that- is that smoke?” There was a squawk, and then Taako snapped his fingers and snuffed out the fire. It seemed like something that he was used to, strangely enough.

“Not anymore, my man,” and Lup peeked around the tree just in time to see Taako plant a kiss on a beaming Kravitz, and she wrinkled her nose and ducked back around. Not her place, and also, ew. 

After a few minutes there was a tearing sound as a rip was cut between the planes, and soft goodbyes were said before Kravitz presumably stepped through and away.

Footsteps approached, and before Lup could get up Taako had plopped down next to her, dropping his hat on her legs. “Nice one there, Lulu.”

“Yeah, least I could do, Koko,” Lup said, grinning at the most important person in her life her friend. He had a dumb smile on his face and looked like he was ready to levitate a foot off the ground, and when she bumped her shoulder into his he jostled her back.

Some tightness in her eased, and even though they didn’t talk about much of anything – and she did definitely poke fun at his date choices, while simultaneously threatening to figure out how to destroy the Grim Reaper if things turned south – Lup felt more at home than she had in a long time.

that’s a great explanation, tyler