Defying Gravity

**Saturday, November 14th, 2020. East Downtown Halcyon City.**

The Jackal van lumbers out of East Downtown Halcyon and turns onto a long street winding towards what used to be the abandoned warehouse district, now the sprawling fae forest alongside the bay. Even from a few miles away, the pitch black tops of shadowy trees in the center of the forest are visible. Lost in thought, Melody fails to notice the depression in the asphalt in front of her as the van shakes and the radio blares to life.

*Hang on to your hopes, my friend*

*That's an easy thing to say, but if your hopes should pass away*

*Simply pretend*

*That you can build them again*

“Shit, sorry,” Melody’s hand reaches for the volume dial on the Jackal van’s radio. “Fuckin’ thing turns on every time I hit a pothole. Pretty sure it’s haunted or something.”

“No problem,” Ellen pulls at her seatbelt, currently choking her from being jerked forward. “Hey Mel? When you get promoted to, like, regional manager of Jackal Co. L-T-D or whatever, does that job come with a new set of wheels? A better set of wheels? A *functioning* set of wheels? Just curious.” She fiddles with the buttons and dials on the radio, knowing any attempts to adjust the music are ultimately futile.

“Dude! Besides the radio, this runs super well,” Melody shoots a quick frown to Ellen before petting the dashboard reassuringly. “Wouldn’t have made it out of the future without this van. And we got it all tricked out there too! You saw all the pipes and wires and shit under the chassis now, right? And it can go like, *almost* 90 miles per hour. That’s SUCH an improvement.”

“Oh! And it’s powered by garbage now!” Melody beams as she turns the Jackal van onto a dirt road that approaches a massive knot of tree vines. “We got that swapped in after we ran out of gas in… 2069? Turns out they don’t use gas in the future.” Melody playfully furrows her brow at Ellen. “You shoulda told me that one.”

“Huh. I actually didn’t know that about 2069. We never spent enough time in the near future to need to refill the bike’s tank. Too much, uh…” Ellen stalls while trying to figure out how to say ‘it’s weird to pop in and find out which of your friends are old and which ones are dead, didn’t super wanna do that a whole lot more’ politely. Unsuccessful in this endeavour, she elides the subject. “It just wasn’t cool enough so we jumped as soon as we could. But hey! At least this thing isn’t a waste of gas money any more! I’m so proud.”

Ellen flashes Mel a shit-eating grin before her attention is taken by the increasingly thick canopy of the fae forest overhead. She looks out the passenger side window with a slight grimace. “Y’know, all the places me ‘n’ Tay have been and somehow *this* is one of the shittiest. Right in our backyard. Never woulda thought. You think that stupid fox is gonna show up again?”

“Nope,” Melody exhales loudly in response, “we’re gonna skip that little bastard. ‘Cause I don’t think we can *actually* get there if we just try to go through the forest normally? Like, I tried once after I made the shadow part of the forest, and I ran into that Fox again, and like…”

Only the humming of the Jackal van’s engine fills the cabin for a moment as Melody thinks of how to parse her experience. “The fox showed me pretty much all my worst nightmares happening? Like…” *You and Tay leaving for time stuff forever without saying bye. Aman blaming me for losing the Eye. My parents disappearing. That stuff with Atlanta, and Ernest, and… oh, the one with Mel. Why that one…?*

“Okay, besides the extra fucked up ones that you’d probably guess already, the Fox showed me an illusion of Mel. And he was totally fuckin’ normal, but he was like, two or three inches taller than he normally is?! I don’t know how that Fox knew that’d piss me off, but I hate it. So yeah. Skipping that whole mess.”

Ellen nods along with understanding—she can guess what some of those worst fears are—until Melody mentions the Mel-being-taller thing, at which point she crinkles her nose in confusion. “Wh- what fucking difference would it make if he was taller? He’s already made of spaghetti, why- *why is that a thing you care about, Melody?*”

She can’t contain her laughter much longer than that, collapsing against the door in a fit of giggles. She can picture it all too clearly, Noodle stretching like a cartoon and Melody making that upset face she gets when she hates something but can’t explain why. The same expression she’s sporting right now.

She calms down enough to ask, “Ok then, so how do we get in?”

As Ellen begins laughing, Melody’s scrunched up nose and narrowed eyes give way to her own giggle fit. She parks the van where the gnarled roots surrounding the forest momentarily ease, and a small walking path can be seen through them. She leans back in her chair and continues cracking up at Ellen’s response to how ridiculous she knows she sounds.

“Okay! I don’t know why!” Melody looks at Ellen with an expression somewhere between embarrassment and righteousness. “But he’s like, way taller than me already! And older! And *such* a dork! That’s not how things should work. It should be a crime.” She crosses her arms defiantly and nods at Ellen.

“And for getting in there… it’s easier for me to focus here and find the right spot, but basically… we’re gonna take the quick way? The… teleporty shadowy way.”

Staring towards the opening to the forest for a few moments, Melody turns back and gives Ellen a half-smile. “You sure you’re good with this dude? It was really cool of you to offer to come and stuff, but like… shit’s weird there? You’ve been to Shadow Halcyon with me before so probably like, less weird for you I guess. But still. Lots of nicer places to spend an afternoon, y’know?”

“Melody I swear to god if you try to talk me out of this one more time I’m gonna jump out of this death trap on wheels and go solo. It’ll be fine! Besides, it wasn’t even that bad last time, right?”

Ellen tries to think back on their previous trip to Shadow Halcyon together—it’s been a few years for her at this point, but Shadow Halcyon isn’t really a place you forget that easily—to remember what it was like. *Darkness, weird gravity shit, some people tried to kill us. That combo musta happened at least a dozen times while we were travelling. Same diff.*

“Unless,” she turns slowly to face Melody, eyes wide with fake revelation, “this was all just an elaborate plan to disappear me and this is how I find out you don’t like me anymore. Wow, abandoned in a magic forest? So cliche; I really should’ve seen it coming.” Ellen hangs her head.

Melody shakes her head with mock sadness while doing a terrible job fighting off a smile. “Okay wow, if last time wasn’t that bad for you, then you and Tay must’ve seen some *wild* shit in the last couple years. And I’m sorry you had to find out this way, Ellen. I know abandoning you in a magical forest to exact my revenge is cliche, but what can I say? I’m a big fan of the classics.”

Placing an arm around Ellen’s shoulder, Melody pulls her into a quick side hug before taking off her own seatbelt and opening the driver’s side door. Hopping out of the van, she turns back to Ellen with a smirk. “Well, ready for like, your inevitable demise or whatever?”

“We both knew this couldn’t last forever.”

Ellen immediately wishes she could take those words back as she exits the garbagemobile, the slam of the door breaking the eerie silence. *Oh fuck. Ah fuuuuuuuck. Why did I say that?! Hey dumbass, maybe don’t point out the fact that you’re leaving again when that went so great last time. Fuck. What to say, what do I say?*

“Ok, that was a mistake. I mean, not actually, but like… y’know what, I’m just gonna say sorry and shut up about it. Sorry.” She keeps walking next to Melody, looking straight ahead, staying quiet.

A few awkward moments of silence follow, the crunching of gravel and dirt underfoot seeming to echo off the edges of the sprawling forest as the girls continue towards the opening. Finally, Melody sighs and stops in her tracks.

“You still suck at talking sometimes,” Melody lets out a melancholic laugh, stuffing her hands into her coat pockets and looking at the ground. She tucks her arms against her chest, as if hugging herself, before continuing. “But… yeah. I know we’re on borrowed time or whatever. Knew that since the day you got back, remember?”

Raising her head, Melody turns to give Ellen her best attempt at a smile. *Yeah, she’s never gonna buy that I’m happy about her leaving again. I’m not that good at acting. Even if I was, she’d see through it. She always does with me.*

“Even if--when, when you take off again--doesn’t change shit, man. You’re still my sister, even if you’re in the year 3000-something or fighting dinosaurs or... I dunno. Whatever you end up doing. That never changes.”

“Or, that’s what I’d be saying--” Melody tries to force a grin again, “--if I hadn’t led you out here to toil in my magic forest bakery for eternity, or whatever.”

“Oh, there’s a bakery now? I didn’t realize Lanta was in on this, too.” Ellen scans the surrounding forest, half expecting Atlanta to run out of nowhere to catch up. A smile creeps back on to her face as some of the weight lifts from her shoulders. “We’re… we’re working on things. Thanks Mel.” A small rift appears next to Melody and Ellen softly punches her in the shoulder.

Melody laughs at the mental image of her and Atlanta leading Ellen out to a magical forest bakery, like the villains in a fairy tale. She walks Ellen and bumps her shoulder with a fist before slowly approaching the opening. “Crap, I need to get Atlanta in on this. If anyone was gonna help me trap you here, it’d be her, right? Next time, I’m g--”

*There it is. God, it feels weird to just… feel where it is. Know where it is without looking.*

Turning back to Ellen with a more serious look, Melody nods to her. “Okay, this is close enough. I can get us there the rest of the way, without that Fox messing stuff up. Long as you’re cool turning into shadow for a sec, anyway.”

The shadows cast by the canopy of the nearby forest start slowly sliding across the ground towards Melody. The tree trunks themselves groan in protest as an eerie cacophony momentarily fills the forest.

“Last chance to back out.” Melody asks, offering a hand in Ellen’s direction. The shadows on the ground start pooling around Melody’s body, casting parts of her face in otherworldly relief.

Melody’s arm is barely fully extended before Ellen grabs her hand and squeezes her gauntleted fingers around it. “Not a chance in the fucking world. Plus I’m already out of the van, so you kinda have to take me now.”

“Can’t blame me for trying.” Melody gives Ellen a warm smile as shadows begin crawling around Ellen’s body as well. “Thanks Ellen. Don’t let go.”

All at once, the two girls dissolve into shadow and instantaneously slip between Halcyon, the Otherworld, and back again. Melody was mostly accustomed to the feeling-- it’d almost been a year since the Jackals had bonded with her and shared their powers, and she’d wasted little time in training to master them. She was used to the momentary but overwhelming sensation of wrongness, of everything in her body screaming, of feeling like the shadow was crushing her. *This is nothing anymore. I remember when it was. But Ellen might be the toughest person I’ve ever met. She’ll be fine.*

As Melody and Ellen reform inside the shadow forest, Melody squeezes Ellen’s hand more tightly as the reversed gravity tries to drag Ellen upwards into the sky. “Might wanna do your thing now!”

The experience of travelling to the shadow forest is different from last time, not that she has a great memory of how she got there last time, different to how she and Tay were used to travelling. Time jumps always felt defined by absence: they were cold, it was hard to breathe, it felt like her body would be scattered in every direction if she didn’t focus. But this? This place? It’s overwhelming in a weirdly opposite way; there is so much of everything.

And thank goodness one of those things is Melody.

“... do your thing now!”

Melody’s voice snaps Ellen out of her daze, a trance-like state she finds herself slipping into out of habit. Her eyes are already open but she jolts to attention, already a few feet off the ground, hand held firmly in Melody’s. She activates the gravity regulator in her boots and two pinpricks of red light appear in the endless darkness as she drops and plants her feet solidly on the ground.

There are so many things running through Ellen’s head all trying to come out at once—this is awesome, I feel like I’m gonna barf, was it like this last time I was here, is it always like this, did we just… disintegrate, thanks for holding on—but all she manages in the chaos is a stupid noise.

“Bwargh?!”

There’s a beat of silence with the two making silent eye contact before they break into laughter.

Tentatively letting go of Ellen’s hand, Melody fights to get her giggling under control. As the intensity of the situation vanishes, she finds herself beaming at Ellen.

“Yeah, I feel about the same. You good? Now that we actually got here, things shouldn’t be too… bad...”

“Yeah I only feel a little bit like I was turned inside out and back again now. I dunno what you were fussing about so much. God.” Ellen is doubled over, half from laughter and half from that vomit-y feeling that hasn't quite gone away yet. She starts following Melody’s lead, falling behind as she takes slow steps to get used to the different gravity.

Melody finds herself trailing off as she takes in the shadow forest surrounding her. The one that she’d summoned into being, binding this area of the fae forest to the Jackals’ realm of Shadow Halcyon in order to get their help defeating the Rokkr.

It mostly looked the same as her visit the week before. The spires of ice created by the Rokkr’s runic gauntlets, transformed into shadowy approximations of themselves during the scuffle, still remained. The multitude of shadowy trees was still here. Off in the distance, that strange building that A-Vis had told her to avoid hadn’t gone anywhere. But…

“Huh.” Melody tilts her head and approaches a shadow tree nearby. The shadow-wreathed ground around the base of it was elevated and splintered. “Weird. That wasn’t here last time. I mean, the tree was, but not this stuff. Looks kinda like, uh… huh.” She scratches her head and shrugs at Ellen. “When I was really little, this tree near our house grew really big and started breaking through the sidewalk. I guess it reminds me of that...?”

“Guess the forest ain’t giving up without a fight,” Ellen kneels by the broken pavement and pokes a stick into the cracks. “Oooh, think we’ll see a fight? Like can regular forest stuff get in here and then start fighting like a shadow version of something? Or does anything that comes in here just…” her gaze slowly rises to the endless void above them, and Ellen scrunches her face. *Hmmm, let’s not think about that right now.*

Melody crouches to watch Ellen poke into the pavement cracks and chuckles. “Probably best not to think about it, yeah. I mean... “ she follows Ellen’s gaze up to the shadowy abyss of the sky and grimaces, “I’m guessing that’s what happens, with gravity all fucked up here. I’ve been coming a few weeks now and haven’t seen anything else really… living here. At least in the middle of the shadow forest. Maybe it gets weirder at the edges with the fae forest? I haven’t really checked.”

Standing up, Melody sweeps her eyes around again. “The Jackals are like, very good at preventing travel to places. It’s sorta their thing. So this place is probably locked down pretty tight. Don’t think we’ll really see anything you haven’t seen in Shadow Halcyon alrea--”

An eerie, high-pitched hoot echoes from the bough above the girls. Startled, their eyes dart up to meet the pitch-black gaze of an owl covered in shadow staring back.

“Me and my big fucking mouth.” Melody grumbles, looking to Ellen with befuddlement. “This… wasn’t here last time. Hi… owl?”

“Pffft, rule one of weird places, dude: never say ‘that thing doesn’t happen here’!” Ellen stands next to Melody and extends the stick up to the owl, offering it a perch. “Heeeeeey there little guy, we’re friendly, I promise. Just also be cool and come on doooooown.”

The owl makes another shrill chirp and stays on its branch, face rotating counter-clockwise while its eyes stay locked on the two girls. “Hmm… I’m gonna take that as a ‘no thanks’. Fair enough,” Ellen tosses the stick aside with a shrug.

Melody tilts her head clockwise to mirror the owl, staring it down for a few moments before shrugging as well. “Aww. Fine. Be that way.”

Turning to Melody she continues, “So weeks and you haven’t seen anything like this, huh? Whatcha been doing in here anyway?”

Nodding to Ellen, Melody gestures to the rest of the forest. “Yeah, it’s been dead-ass quiet here when I’ve been coming. And I’ve just been, y’know, enjoying the scenic hellscape of my own creation.”

Looking around at the shadowy ice spires at the center of a nearby clearing, Melody sighs loudly before turning back to Ellen. “I don’t really know why I’ve been coming here, dude. Before this place got made, I didn’t know I’d gotten good enough at controlling my shadow that I can be like, a part of here or whatever. Where the gravity doesn’t fuck with me. So I wanted to see how long I can do that without messing up.” She narrows her eyes in thought, before beginning to count on her fingers. “I think I’m up to six hours straight? I even fell asleep one time, and didn’t float up to my doom or whatever before I woke up.”

*Of course she’s still training*, Ellen muses to herself with an exasperated smile, *wouldn’t be Mel if she wasn’t trying to get better at… something. At least she slept this time.*

“It’s kinda weird,” she gives Ellen an apologetic half-smile. “As different as this place is, it feels really… familiar to me. Comfortable, I guess. Like I belong here. It’s how I felt in Shadow Halcyon the first time I went, too. No idea why. Sure doesn’t look like home.”

“Eh, what’s ‘home’ supposed to look like anyway?” Ellen shrugs and hooks an arm around Melody’s shoulders, “It’s about… well, Tay always calls it ‘vibes’, and I can’t really think of a better word than that, so let’s go with that: if you and this place ‘vibe’, then just let it happen. Some people never find a place that feels like ‘home’ in their whole life, and now you’ve got two!”

She stares at the few visible landmarks before her eyes drift up again to the endless black sky and she sighs wistfully. “‘Sides, not like I don’t get why you’d like this place.” It’s just loud enough for Melody to hear.

“Guess that’s a good way to think about it, ya. Vibing with it.” Melody leans gently into Ellen before following her gaze to the void above. “Ahh. Yeah. Fuckin’... space, man. Can’t believe I *still* haven’t got to go. So much time travel, alternate universes, Deep Realms, but never just… space. Regular-ass space. Pssh. I wanna go.”

Melody huffs to herself as she continues staring into the darkness above, but finally speaks in a more hesitant voice. “Speaking of uh… vibes. How’re you and Tay holding up? It’s been… what... five months since you got back? Holy crap, has it been that long?” She laughs awkwardly, her head still raised to the pitch-black sky, as her eyes turn to study Ellen’s face. “Feeling any more like home again?”

Ellen huffs in return, internally relieved Mel didn’t make a “time flies” joke. “I guess so, in that we wanna leave again. Don’t get me wrong,” she rolls her head to face Melody, “it’s been rad seeing everyone here again. And, like, we’ll miss you and all, but… I don’t even know if we’d call Halcyon ‘home’ anymore. Been a long time since we ‘vibed’ with anywhere like that.”

“I don’t even know why we’re talking about me and Tay leaving when it’s not like we can actually *go* anywhere. Bike’s still in pieces and we’re still locked down.” Ellen lets out a loud sigh and stuffs her hands in her pockets, giving a defeated shrug. “Why don’t we talk about *your* shit, huh? How’s planning League 2.0 going?” She elbows Melody and raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, pssh, basically done already. Just need to recruit a few more badass people.” Melody grins broadly at Ellen, her eyes flashing with excitement as she lets the idea of joining a new team with Ellen again take hold. After a few moments, her grin is replaced by an apologetic smile.

“Okay, definitely-secret-wish-that-I’m-great-at-hiding: it’d be fuckin’ rad if you wanted to join. But…” she continues with a dispirited sigh, “for some reason I got the sense that it wouldn’t really be your and Tay’s jam? Especially if you’re like, gonna bounce again when you get your bike fixed and time stuff dealt with. And I mean, with you two trying to get something done? There’s no way you don’t get that all taken care of soon. God help whoever gets in your way.”

“Also… joking about the ‘basically done’ thing.” Melody puts a hand to her head and lets out an exhausted groan. “There’s so much like… *work* that you have to do to set these things up. I kinda get why the adults just fuckin’... gave up and didn’t make a new one when the last one fell apart. So much like… contacting people, and paperwork, and… budgeting?” She gives Ellen a "*can you believe this?"* shrug. “Me and Gwen are supposed to look at an office pretty soon. Not like… a secret base with a submarine dock and costume maker or whatever. Just a regular-ass office. With *a* bathroom.”

“Does Jackal’s place *not* have a bathroom? Isn’t that a thing you want? Hmm, not the point.” Ellen takes a few steps forward, “What I mean is: you do know no one’s making you do this right? Like, you can just walk away from all the forms and shit. You literally do not have to do this,” she spins on her heels and snaps a finger gun at Melody, “but you still wanna, don’t you?”

Melody returns the smile to Ellen. “Hell yeah. I mean, you know me. The harder it is, the more exciting it is. And it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t tough to figure out how to do all this stuff. Besides…”

Looking back to the spires of shadowy ice nearby, Melody’s voice fills with determination. “I actually think it’s really important? I mean, the League used to do *a lot* of fighting bad guys, and they didn’t quit cause they ran out of stuff to do. All that dangerous shit has just been everyone else’s problem lately. And I just… wanna make stuff safer for everyone else, y’know? For mom and dad, and other civilians, and like… the new people on Big Team, too. There’s some amazing people on the team now, and I want them to like… learn how to take care of themselves and figure out who they are and shit without risking their lives every week. I mean, if making a new league helps that get down to ‘risking their lives every *other* week’, that’s still a big improvement!”

“No shit! I’m pretty sure we saw less action while we were gone, and we jumped, like, every couple of days.” Ellen chuckles and hangs her head before making eye contact with Melody again.

“You’re right, by the way. Your new league? Not really our style- well, actually Tay’d probably fight anyone so long as she thinks they’re wrong. Y’know, for a dead person, she sure has a fuckton of energy. Ok I’m getting off track again. Uh…” She drums her fingers on her chin while she thinks of what to say, puts the words together; her songwriting isn’t the only thing that’s been affected by her recent trouble with words.

Melody turns back to Ellen after the pause goes on a little too long. Watching her friend deep in thought with an expression that shouts “I’m trying to think of how to say a thing”, she can’t help but softly smile.

*Five months and I’m still getting used to that. You used to know exactly what you wanted to say every time. Even if you regretted it the second you said it.*

After a minute she continues. “That thing in you? The one that’s like ‘I’ve gotta make things better for other people’. I don’t know if we have that. Not in a, like, ‘I’m gonna fight for strangers’ kinda way. Hell, I can probably list all the people I actively give a shit about on my hands!”

Ellen stares at her hands in contemplation.

“Actually, maybe just *one* hand…” Slowly, she starts counting on her fingers.

“Hope I’m on the list! I mean, at least until I leave you here,” Melody smirks broadly at Ellen before her expression is replaced by a soft but serious smile.

“I don’t believe that, though. I mean… the ‘actively giving a shit about people’ thing? Sure. Seems like you and Tay have some people you’re extra close with, and maybe you’re less close with other people. But I think everyone’s *kinda* like that. Like, if I really honestly tried to count up how many people I super super care about…” Melody starts counting on her hands before giving up. “Okay, it’s more than how many fingers I have, but the point is that there is a number. It’s not infinite.”

“But even if we’re talking about someone you and Tay don’t actively give a shit about… if either of you saw someone in trouble? Someone that *actually* needed your help? You’d help. I’ve seen both of you do that enough since I met you, before you left and after you came back. Even if you guys don’t let too many people in or whatever, you still have huge fuckin’ hearts. Big reason why I love you two.” Suddenly self-conscious that she’s being corny, Melody clears her throat and grins at Ellen again. “That and the pancakes. *Mostly* the pancakes, honestly.”

“See if we ever feed you anything ever again!” Ellen punches Melody in the shoulder, not at full strength but enough to make the threat serious. “I can’t believe one of the only people I like in this whole stupid city was just using me for pancakes this whole time. Like, death threats I get, but this? Fuckin’ hurts, dude.”

“God, you’re such a fuckin’ jock with your I-believe-in-you-and-the-goodness-in-everyone speech. Love you too, Mel.”

“Owww. Mhm. Definitely feel the love.” Melody rubs her shoulder and attempts to frown at Ellen, but can’t help herself as she immediately beams at the other girl. After sharing a laugh, one of Melody’s eyebrows raises quizzically.

“I guess I shoulda asked before, but is there anything you wanna do here? Besides just chill?” Scanning around the shadow forest for some semblance of landmarks or activities, Melody eventually turns back to Ellen with a shrug. “I mean, we could throw down! I’m always up for that. But it’s a little more dangerous than normal cause ‘losing focus’ means ‘might fall into the abyss above us’. There’s also, uh… shadow ice spires, shadow trees… I think that’s i--”

“Oh!” Melody shouts with sudden realization. “Y’know I forgot to check the last few times, but before I kinda made the forest shadowy, there was also this weird building A-Vis told us not to go into? I’m guessing that bastard fox put it in the forest to fuck with them specifically or something. Anyway, that wasn’t too far away. It might have got caught in the Shadow Halcyon-ing?”

“Yeah, I was wondering what was up with that,” Ellen nods over at the building in the distance, “but figured it was from your side of things. Man, that fox just can’t not be a piece of shit, huh?”

Ellen tries in vain to get a better look at the building, but between the distance, the darkness, and the other things in the way, a hand over her eyes does little to help. She nudges Melody before starting to rise into the air, “Hey, I’m just gonna try to get a better look, don’t let me float off or anything,” peering out again from her higher vantage point. The building looks normal enough, surroundings notwithstanding: it’s low and boxy and is the kind of place she’d ignore entirely if she just saw it out on a city street.

Settling back on the ground, Ellen looks at Melody with a scheming look. “Well, it doesn’t look like much,” her mouth breaks into a fiendish smile, “but I’ll take any opportunity to ruin that fox’s day.”

Grinning back at Ellen, Melody snickers. “Ohhhhh. See, I was thinking of just checking it out or whatever. What, you wanna knock it over?” Scratching the back of her head in contemplation, she looks to the building and laughs. “I mean, I’m down for that! I’ve somehow never actually broken down a building, weirdly enough? I feel like I’ve been doing this Big Team thing all wrong.”

“How many are you up to, anyway?” Melody rolls her neck and starts excitedly walking. “Seb told me about a Bishop factory or something that you and Ernest leveled once? Sounded intense.”

“Hmmm… I’m pretty sure we left it standing, but if it was me and Ern, with *our* track record? I guess that sounds right. Guess I’ll have to show you how it’s done, newbie.” Ellen cracks her knuckles, smirking at Melody. *Like she’ll need my help*. She laughs at the absurdity of the notion that Melody Goldman would need any help in taking down a building she didn’t want standing.

“We can look around before knocking it down if you want. Who knows, might be worth letting it stay. Can’t think of why, but hey, only one way to find out?”

“Oh, nah, the more I think about it, I’m totally good just flattening it,” Melody nods assuredly to herself as she giggles. “A-Vis asked us not to go in there last time so like… I’m down for respecting that still. And like, us knocking it over so other people can’t go in is like… basically us being awesome teammates, right?”

Making their way through the forest, they quickly reach the austere two-story building that fails to breach the canopy. *It’d almost be a good secret base out here*, Melody muses to herself as she studies a long rectangular wall, *if it didn’t have that ‘mildly haunted’ vibe. Oh well. I wonder if that candy house is still out in the forest…*

Shaking her head back into focus, Melody gestures toward a long side of the barracks-like structure and grins at Ellen. “Well, you’re the pro. Show me how it’s done.”

“Hmmm, depends on how you wanna do this. Do you want it to fall like a house of cards, or do you wanna go wrecking ball mode on it? There’s a *science* to this, you know.”

“Hmmmm…” Melody tilts her head and imagines the two of them carefully punching out walls and support beams, until with one final punch, the entire building collapses under its own weight. Then she pictures the two of them just smashing apart the building without a care in the world.

“Wrecking ball mode sounds pretty sweet.”

Ellen slaps a hand down on Melody’s shoulder with an immensely proud expression on her face. “*This* is why I like you. This is gonna be sick. Ok, for that *true* wrecking ball experience, we’re gonna need something to swing from and something heavy.” Ellen starts looking up and around for somewhere for Melody to anchor one of her chains, before remembering that literally everything around them is shadow. *This is gonna be siiiiiiick.*

“Mel, can you make us a swing? Like, just give us some chains to hang off, I can make us super heavy, and we can bring this place the fuck down!” Ellen is practically shaking with excitement.

“Oh *shit*,” Melody cackles, “*hell yes* I can make us a swing! You can make us super heavy now?! Seriously? That’s so fucking rad! Why haven’t we done this yet?!”

Stopping for a moment to stare wide-eyed in amazement at Ellen, Melody bounces with eagerness as her head spins around and looks for tree branches to affix her shadow chains to. Spotting a large bough nearby, she extends a hand as shadows from the ground snake upwards into the shapes of two chains that coil tightly around the bough.

As the chains dangle from the tree and their low rattling echoes across the forest, Melody takes a deep breath before meeting Ellen’s gaze.

“Ellen? This is the *best* idea ever.”

“Secretly, I hope the fox can see this right now. They should be honoured; most buildings don’t get taken down *nearly* as rad as this. Well, give it a few decades, and- never mind! Not the point! Ok, let’s do this.”

Ellen grabs Melody’s hand like they’re in an action movie and adjusts the gravity settings on her boots. The pair lurch and drop a few inches suddenly as the branch creaks, straining to hold the extra weight.

“We should go before this thing gives out. We just gotta let go just after the low point of the arc to make sure we crash riiiiiight into the wall. Ready?”

Melody grips Ellen’s hand tighter and beams at her as the bough groans under their weight again.

“I was *born* ready for this. Hope that bastard fox enjoys the show.”

With a nod, the swing starts to drop, rapidly picking up speed as they approach the ground. It’s all so quiet—no wind rushing past their ears, the shadow chains eerily silent compared to their metal equivalents, even the branch of the tree is too far to hear anymore.

Until the crash.

Melody and Ellen let go of the chains just as they begin their upswing, holding onto each other as they fly straight for the broad side of the building. Ellen shuts her eyes just before they make contact, Melody’s expression of absolute joy the last thing she sees before they bust into, and then through the building.

“*Hahaha!--*” Melody’s gleeful laugh is quickly drowned out by an explosive crack as the girls crash through the building, a cacophony of splintering wood and burst concrete following their passage through the barracks. As they rocket through yet another wall and skid to a quick halt in the forest on the other side, Melody turns back to the massive series of holes left in the building behind them.

“Holy shit!” Still holding onto Ellen, Melody barely notices the continued presence of the increased gravity as she hops up and down in excitement. “Did we do it?! Does it just fall over now? Do we do it again?”

“Hoo, I dunno,” Ellen rolls over and wobbles to an upright sitting position. Her ears are still ringing and her whole body feels too heavy—the increased gravity still weighing her down. “Building this size? Probably gonna need a couple more hits to take down.” She tries to give Melody another mischievous grin through her dizziness.

*Pffft, she’s like a fuckin’ puppy!*

“Again?”

With a hand up from Melody, Ellen manages to get her bearings and the two set up for another go at the building, then another and another. By the time they’re done with the place, it’s been reduced to a pile of rubble in front of them, chunks of wall and floor indistinguishable from one another, metal bent and twisted into works of modern art, and everything else reduced to scraps and shards.

Quiet retakes the forest as the dust settles, interspersed with ragged breaths from the two girls standing triumphantly in the rubble of their own creation.

“Okay,” Melody huffs, catching herself before she nearly trips on the splinters of what used to be a beam of oak. “Damn. That was *so* sick! I can’t believe we never did this before! We should… do this… more often...”

Struggling to catch her breath, Melody bends over to rest her hands on her knees. “Are you used to this gravity stuff already?” She turns towards Ellen with a slight wobble, still beaming just as much as when they’d started the destruction. “Really snuck up on me after the… however many times we did that.”

“You get used to it, I guess.” Ellen is stretching out her stiffness; don’t wanna develop post-wreck cramps or anything. “You kinda have to concentrate a lot with these things,” she wiggles a boot towards Melody, “or else… You know what? Doesn’t matter. Point is this was rad and we should totally do it again. You think they need any wrecking crews in Halcyon? For some weird reason, I don’t think a whole bunch more buildings are gonna suddenly pop up in here any time soon.”

She laughs through her response until the last line, knotting her face with concern at the thought that she may have just jinxed something. *Whatever*, Ellen shrugs to herself, *that’s a future problem for some other sucker.*

Sitting and then laying on the ground next to Melody, Ellen stares up at the endless black sky. “How far do you think it goes? Can you feel where the shadow ends?” She muses to Mel while still looking straight up.

“Sorta,” Melody wobbles one more time before gently falling back onto the ground herself. “I mean, I can’t feel where it ends? Like, I feel it going for a while, but then it feels like…”

She exhales loudly, turning to briefly look at Ellen before returning her gaze to the darkness above them. *If there’s anyone in the world who's going to be okay with you telling her weird shit, it’s Ellen.*

“It’s… Shadow Halcyon past that. Like… the real one, the one we’ve been to before. If we fell up into the sky, we’d end up there.” Melody lets the words hang in the air before laughing to herself. “After the last time we went there with the Reaper and Yamato and that bullshit, I figured you’re not jonesing to go back or whatever, but y’know. Standing offer.”

“Honestly, I could go for that. Probably be less shitty this time.” Ellen chuckles, “Ah, can’t go right now, though. Tay’d kill me if we went without her again. Rain check?”

“Sounds good,” Melody giggles. “Yeah, we totally gotta bring Tay next time too! She can control shadows and stuff now, right? Maybe she’ll think it’s fun.”

Staring at the abyss above them a bit longer, she thinks of some sightseeing locations in Shadow Halcyon that she could bring Ellen and Tay to someday. *There’s that building that looks like my hou-- no, Ellen’s seen that. Maybe there’s a shadow Big Base there? Never checked. And the old school, right right. And uh… that skyscraper! Wait, no, that fell into the ice in the sky. Wonder if it’s still stuck up there…?*

Eventually, Melody sighs and sits partially up. “Okay, I was gonna ask if you wanted to spar once we got used to the gravity, but after that wrecking ball stuff, it seems like we’re both pretty gassed. But that is actually like, a really good time to trai--”

Ellen fixes Melody with an expression she hasn’t had to use in a very long time, but finds her face falling into without even thinking. An expression that says “I swear on everything you love, if you try to make me exercise right now, I will vomit on you.” She’s glad to see it’s as effective now as it ever was.

Melody turns to catch the look on Ellen’s face before sheepishly scratching the back of her own head. “Nope! You’re right, bad idea. Uhhhh… hmm. Anything else you wanna do here? I could show you around more, but I think we hit all the landmarks. Figuratively and literally and all that.”

“Dude, can you just sit still for, like, 10 minutes? Can you handle that?” Ellen pulls Mel back to the ground and reaches into her backpack dangling off one of her arms. “I got just the thing, you’re gonna love this.”

She yanks at a black metal handle poking out of her bag, displaying the whole product to Melody proudly. “Ta-daaaaa,” she rotates her prize, a simple tray with a tall handle holding a milky white ball, in front of Melody. “I figured if this place was gonna be anything like last time, not a whole lot to look at straight up, so… fuckin’ ta-da!”

“Whoa!” Melody tries to match Ellen’s enthusiasm and briefly studies the object before tilting her head quizzically. “That’s a...! Um. Okay, I have no idea what that is.”

“Huh, fair. I guess it doesn’t look like a lot, I’ll just do the… one sec.” Ellen twists the sphere in place on the tray and it begins to glow, slowly lighting up herself and Melody before the light starts to spread and swim beyond them. It reaches impossibly far, beaming up and out into the darkness, beyond their sight. The blobs float gently through the sky, even brighter than Ellen remembered them, against the pitch black around them.

*Well thank fuck that worked.*

“Whoaaaaaaaaaa,” Melody lies back and marvels at the globules of light spreading out from Ellen’s lantern, watching them dance through the dark sky above them. A wave of melancholy briefly washes over her as she remembers what the forest used to look like--bright, colorful, vibrant--though not quite as brilliant as these lantern lights set against the endless dark.

She rolls her head to one side and follows a small ball of brightness as it meanders lazily past a tree branch. As it does, the shadow covering the branch momentarily shrinks away to reveal the white bark of the tree behind it. As the light floats away, the shadows crawl back with some hesitation.

“Huh. Cool.” Melody watches the tree in silence a bit longer before turning to stare back up at balls of whitish light trail into the sky for a while.

“This thing’s really fuckin’ cool, Ellen,” she finally breaks the quiet. “Where’d you find it?”

“Picked it up at an auction.” Ellen doesn’t offer an expanded explanation, just a mischievous smile. “We really gotta get you to space one of these days.”

“No kidding, dude.” The small whitish lantern lights continue floating up into the massive shadowy void above them, looking almost like tiny stars. Taking in the miniature galaxy, Melody lets out a longing sigh before craning her head toward Ellen again.

“Winter break… this summer… next week… whenever you get the bike fixed… you guys gotta take me, okay?”

“Yeah, well, whenever *that* happens, consider yourself officially at the bottom of the extensive waiting list. We know a lot of randos, you know.” Ellen rolls back her head, looking at Melody upside down and snorts.

“Wow, I see how it is.” Melody can’t help grinning before she covers her mouth in mock indignation. “And here I was starting to think about *not* leaving you here forever. Do I still get on the list if I do that?”

“Can’t leave me here to die if I beat you back to the van!” With that, Ellen floats up to her feet, jamming the lantern into her bag as she starts back in the direction they came from. “Loser cooks for the next month of Fridays!”

“Wh--” Melody rolls to her feet and opens her mouth to call back.

*It’s dangerous that way. We might run into the fox over there.*

*It’d be safer if we waited a bit and I jumped us out again.*

*… I’m definitely not gonna miss out on the best pancakes for a month.*

As she dashes after Ellen, Melody’s laugh rings across the forest.

“You’re on!”