Side Story: Donovan’s Crossroads- Working With Family

--- Cassandra ---

She came to with ash in the air, an ache in her bones, and a pile of rubble on top of her.

Forcing herself to look around, she spotted a familiar face nearby and grabbed a stone before throwing it at him. “You alive, Fe?”

Felix grimaced before glaring at her with red eyes and growling. “What no sympathy?”

She raised a single brow at her brother’s other self before gesturing to the rock on top of her, earning a roll of the eyes from the Malcontent.

“Yeah, yeah… I’m coming.” Felix rolled himself over and glared at his leg twisted in the wrong direction. “Actually, going to need a second.”

“Just get over here and let me deal with it.” She told him, not wanting to waste anymore time pinned.

“Nah, I got it.” Fe assured her as he grabbed his leg before violently twisting it into place. “See good as new!”

“Good then you can get me out of here!” She shouted, tapping a hand against the rubble.

“And why exactly can’t you get yourself out of this?” Her (asshole of a) brother asked.

“I don’t have anything to work with, not even any grass for some shoddy flora piece.” She explained tapping the stone beneath her. “And I’d rather not sculpt myself blindly.”

“Fair enough.” Felix shrugged, before placing a single clawed hand on the largest piece of rubble and throwing it five meters away. “Better?”

“As good as I can be with everything going to shit.” She admitted, dusting off her clothes as she brushed the last of the rubble off before taking Fe’s offered hand and letting him pull her to her feet.

“Yeah…” Her brother agreed, inhaling deeply before letting out a black mist as he exhaled. “Any idea what screwed everything up?” He asked her with silver eyes.

“No, just that the old man is going to be pissed we botched such a simple run.” She sighed before taking in the destruction of the street around them. “Ugh, this is going to be a pain to explain.”

Fe waved it off. “Eh, town’s seen worse, I’m sure.”

“You remember back when we thought it’d be boring moving here?” She laughed, picking up her discarded baseball bat.

“Oh, yeah.” Fe laughed with her, as he pulled his chain out in a burst of cinder and ash. “Couldn’t have been more wrong.”

In front of them stood a twelve foot tall monster pulled itself out of the building it’d just thrown them out of. Its skin was a leather hide with bits of graying stone scattered across its flesh, with short limbs ending in claws and a body that was more a large mouth with eyes than an actual body.

“Welp, ugly, ready for round two?”

The beast growled at them before unleashing a roar that would’ve woken anyone the explosion didn’t.

“I’d take that as a yes.” Her brother smiled as his other-self began to bleed into him. “Let’s make him regret it, shall we?”

“Let’s.” She nodded, rushing forward as she dragged her bat against the ground, building up its power.

Ahead of her Fe drop kicked the stone beast as he came out of a cinder step, backflipping off of it as he threw out a wave of fire at the creature.

“Don’t think fire beats stone!” She told him, throwing her bat as hard as she could at the beast, the second blow sending it staggering back as it hit with far more force than she could manage herself.

“Looks like your bat works though.” He threw back, as he sent out a series of chains and wrapped them around the beast’s legs.

She flicked her wrist and immediately snatched the bat out of the air as she appeared in front of it, before using her momentum to slam the bat into its face hard enough to send it flying back onto the building.

“Oof, think that’s going to bite us?” Fe asked, grabbing her hand as he cinderstepped to her.

“Uh, depends on if the old man finds out.” She half-grimaced.

“So that’s a yes.” Fe fully grimaced back.

The stone beast growled at them as it ripped its way out of the building before stomping on the ground, sending a wave of Anima pulsing through it.

“Welp, that’s never a good sign.” Her brother sighed as the ground began to shake.

“Ugh, I hate when they can summon minions.” She groaned as a number of claws began to break through the concrete of the sidewalk and asphalt of the street.

“Only because you’re not allowed to summon yours.” Fe’s other-self scoffed as he began swirling his chain through the air.

“Which is bullshit by the way.” She frowned at her brother’s least helpful self. “Speaking of, don’t you think Grace is a better option given how this thing is fireproof.”

“As if the ice queen could do any better.” Sin scoffed, as her brother’s eyes turned a blazing hellfire red. “Besides…” Sin threw his chain out grabbing one of the half formed minions before pulling it to him. “I’m still strong enough to smash these pests.” The unchained told her, as he wrapped his burning chains around her brother’s hand and punched the minion hard enough to shatter it into dust.

“I’m sure you are.” She admitted, before hitting Sin upside the head with her bat.

Her brother’s entire body froze for a moment before in a single blink his eyes went from hellfire red to a chilling blue.

“Was that really necessary?” Grace asked cooly as she straightened out their clothes with a look of disdain. (More at the clothes than her.)

She shrugged because taking her chances to hit Sin was always necessary. “Fe, still conscious in there or I knock him out too?”

“Mm, you gave him a bit of a spin, but he’s still aware.” Grace answered after a moment, before glaring to the side and flash freezing one of the stone creature’s minions. “Still shall we deal with this rabble?”

“Yeah,” She nodded, looking over the small crowd of four foot tall stone creatures standing around their progenitor. “So, you want the big guy or the little guys?”

“Mm, little I suppose.” Grace decided as she calmly walked forward with both hands behind her back. “Let me know if you require any assistance with the larger one Cathrine.”

“Will do.” She assured her favorite of her brother’s alt-personalities. (I wonder if that’s because I always wanted a sister?)

She briefly remembered her actual foster sister, before watching grace backhand a lunging minion into a nearby car without breaking stride.

(A cool sister anyway.)

“Alright, big guy, just you and me.” She smiled at the stone behemoth as she began pushing Anima into the Spell Ink Roz had covered her in, causing sparking blue lines to appear all over her as her eyes began to glow blue.

She kicked off the ground with far more speed and power than her frame was capable of as she launched herself at the behemoth.

--- Felix ---

“Scale of one to ten… how much trouble do you think we’re in?” He asked as they made their way down the bus, casually noting the way that no one seemed bothered by the two teens covered in ash and blood. (Got to love the people of Blackwell.)

“Eh, more than that time we let the demon blow up half the school before stopping it, and less than that time we wreck the old man’s car.” His sister told him.

“So… a seven?” He suggested, as they got off the bus.

“Yeah, about a seven.” Cass nodded, as they started their way up to a three story building sitting on the otherwise empty intersection of four streets.

Halfway to the house a four-legged flesh colored thing ran up to them panting happily as its clawed hands pawed at the ground and it ran in circles as close to the building’s perimeter as the little abomination dared.

“Ah, Maxwell!” His sister squealed, running up to the flesh golem and rubbing its face much in the way one would a particularly lazy dog. “Who’s an adorably abomination of magic? You are, yes, you are!”

Walking around the display he made his way towards the building’s porch where their household’s actual dog was laying lazily.

“So Church, how fucked are we?” He asked the -he was eighty-percent sure at this point- Corrupted dog.

The dog seemed to consider it for a moment before patting the ground seven times with his front paw.

(Eighty-five percent.) He thought with narrowed eyes.

Pushing the front door open ever so slightly he found the bottom floor of the building empty save for a red haired teen sitting at the front desk and watching something on a little TV.

“Yo, Chris, the old man here?” He whispered just loud enough for the older teen to hear him.

“Yep, and he is pissed.” His foster sister nodded.

“What? Why?” He asked, feigning innocence.

Chris gave him a look before spinning the screen to show a news report covering the decimated shopping district.

“What happened there?” He frowned. “Cat and I were on the other side of-” The screen flashed to an image of Grace crushing a small stone creature under heel… while wearing his face.

(Busted.) Sin cackled unhelpfully from the depths of their fractured mind.

(I can always ask Cat to hit me again.) He offered.

(Kindly avoid giving us any more brain damage.) Grace sighed.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Shaking his head clear, he clapped his hands together with a smile, “So, uh, scale of one to ten…”

“Seven.” Chris told him, turning her TV back to her.

“Fantastic…” He continued to smile.

“What is?” Cass asked followed by her fleshy abomination.

“Oh, everyone agrees it’s a seven.” He explained happily, before running a hand down his face and turning back to Chris with a much more real resignation. “So, where is he?”

“Kitchen.” Chris answered, eyes never leaving the TV as she switched it back to an old cartoon of some kind.

“Well, let’s get this over with.” He sighed, before making his way to one of the building’s two stairwells.

“Ah, no Maxell, you know Sam doesn’t like you in the living room.” Cass told her flesh golem before it could follow them. “Climb up to the attic and I’ll be there soon, alright?”

“Out of curiosity did you ever fix the thing that gave him acid piss?” He asked as they went up the stairs, ignoring the seven flights of stairs leading downward.

“Yeah, I screwed up some filtration stuff when hooking his kidneys up to his bloodstream.” Cass explained. “But they work the way they’re supposed to and leave his acid in his blood.”

“And I’m increasingly glad Sam only lets you have one abomination against nature at a time.” He admitted.

“Does that mean you’re going to tell him about that other one I’m working on?” Cass asked.

“As long as it doesn’t try to attack me again I won’t kill it or tell anyone about it.” He assured her.

“That happened one time!” Cass defended.

“No, it’s happened one time with each of your sculptures.” He argued, honestly getting a little sick of the things trying to attack him in his sleep.

(I don’t know, I like having a reason to burn something alive that you assholes won’t give me shit about.) Sin told him.

(That’s only because you reflexively take over when he’s in danger.)

(Because I’m the most dangerous out of all of us.) Sin bragged.

(...)

(...)

(...)

(Alright, second most dangerous.) Sin corrected after a moment.

(...)

(You know some days I wonder if other fractured Malcontent have these problems…)

“Ah, there you two are.” A man with graying hair commented, lighting a cigar -(That he’d probably been holding for the hour it took us to show up.)- as they walked into the building kitchen.

“Right, let’s just get to it.” He told Sam as he and Cass took their seats at the table. “How much trouble are we in?”

“Well, that depends on a couple of things.” Sam admitted. “Namely, what the hell happened?”

He and Cass’s eyes met for a moment, as they came to an agreement of sorts.

“You remember the Cult of the Blind Gnome?” He asked.

“I know I had to fish one of them out of my trash can and punt it back into the forest again, ‘great one’.” Sam informed him dryly.

“It is not my fault they worship me as a god.” He defended.

“Did you have to stop Church from eating them?” The old man countered. “Because life was a lot simpler before you did that.”

“Gnomes are sapient so… yes?”

(Don’t lie to the man.) Sin told him.

(We’re physically incapable of lying.)

(Which we both know is bullshit so long as you know where to end and begin a sentence.)

(Still, saving them was the morally correct decision.)

“Yeah, try something else.” Sam suggested. “The ‘killing Sapients is wrong’ thing, quits applying after you kill your first sapient demon, fairy, undead, and/or etc.”

“Uh, isn’t there still a subjectivity to morality or something?” Cass asked.

“There would be, if you didn’t spit in god’s face everytime you create one of your little abominations…” The old man pointed out, before more kindly adding that, “They’d be less off putting if you gave them fur or something instead of wrinkly, veiny, pink flesh. Makes them look like a horror movie monster instead of a cute alien critter.”

“You’re a guy, you wouldn’t know cute if it bit you in the ass.” Cass scoffed.

“A, sexist. B, while none have bitten me in the ass I have been bitten by over a dozen universally considered ‘cute’ creatures including babies and flufflepuffs.” Sam argued, before snapping his fingers and pointing at Felix. “And don’t think I don’t see what you two were trying to do there. Real story, now.”

He met the older man’s gaze, silver eyes to silver eyes, for a good minute before finally conceding. “Fine…”

--- Cassandra ---

“Alright, so what exactly is the problem here?” She asked, looking the room over.

“You don’t see this… this thing, in the middle of everything?!” The store owner shrieked.

She glanced around the basement full of odd looking statues that she was fairly certain no one in town would actually be buying anytime soon. “No, no I don’t.”

“Ugh, this over here.” The client told her pointing at a round… thing that seemed to be sticking out of the ground.

“Honestly, I thought that was just the foundation for a statue or something.” Fe admitted, kicking a bit of debris towards it.

“What no, I would nev- Hmm, actually it does look kind of…” Their artistic client gave the rock formation a considering look before shaking their head. “Wait, no, no, not worth it. Not in this town.”

That was probably the most sensible thing she’d heard from any of their clients. (Not that we’ve actually had that many customers, having only worked for the old man for a few months.)

But the point still stood that weirdness in Blackwell was not to be trusted.

She rolled her shoulders feeling an ache in her shoulder that wouldn’t go away.

“Right, well, it’s our job to deal with Blackwell’s weirdness so you don’t have to. Just give us the room and we’ll have this sorted out within the hour.” She assured their client with the smile Sam had been training into her and her brother since he agreed to make them Hunters.

The client was distinctly unimpressed.

“Hmm, well hopefully you two are at least half as competent as that other girl Samuel employs.” The artist told her with a distinctly snobbish attitude before leaving them to it.

“Oof, what a dick.” Fe said once they were alone.

“To be fair I’m pretty sure Chris is better at this than either of us.” She sighed, crouching down closer to the odd rock formation.

“Yeah, well… we can still kick her ass in a fight.” Fe reminded her.

She gave him a smirk. “Was that before or after she shot your dick off?”

“Hey, hey, she shot Sin’s dick off not mine.” Her psychotic brother argued in outrage.

“You two share a body, so if she shot off his dick she shot off yours.” She argued, as she did whenever Sin did something with their body that made her brother cringe.

Fe gave her a glare, before subtly adjusting his pants as he muttered, “I’m just glad it grew back.” at a volume she knew she wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Eh, I’m sure Grace is glad she didn’t have to deal with it anymore.” She shrugged, placing a hand on the stone outcropping and sending a slight pulse of magic through it.

“Actually, she was unconscious during that little… event.” Fe sighed, running a hand down his face. “See anything useful?”

“Yeah, this thing is a bigger underground.” She nodded, before frowning. “It’s also alive.”

“Ugh, everything in this town is either alive, undead, or cursed.” Her brother groaned more emphatically than he would’ve a year ago.

“Or part of a cult.” She reminded him, because she was fairly certain that half of this town was part of one cult or another. (Including the magical creatures.)

“Or part of a fucking cult.” Fe sighed in tired agreement before giving the living stone a look. “So how’re we doing this?”

“Honestly, this is probably just some kind of magical creature that got lost in all those hidden tunnels under the town.” She told him. “Probably got tired and just burrowed itself into a wall somewhere that shared a wall with… the floor.”

“Why would it burrow itself into the ceiling?” Fe asked her just to be an ass.

“I don’t know, magic makes the ceiling a floor, are you really one to be arguing non-euclidean designs?” She frowned at him, remembering the time his other-other-other-self turned their house into a death maze wanting to play.

“Technically, I’m not the one who does that to things.” Her mentally fractured brother pointed out.

Deciding to be the magnanimous sister that she was, she dropped the tangent and went back to the topic at hand. “Regardless this is probably just another creature trying to make its way back to wherever that one… corruptor thing drove them out from.”

“You know I’m kind of glad we moved to this town after they got rid of the eldritch zombie cult.” Fe confessed.

“So am I.” She agreed wholeheartedly, because they may have had to deal with demons and keeping the magical creatures from invading the town but at least when they killed something it stayed dead. “Anyways let’s wake this thing up and escort it back to the forest.”

--- Felix ---

Sam was pinching the bridge of his nose. “At what point did the two of you think it was a good idea to wake up the sleeping monster, inside of the client’s store, while underground I might add?”

He met Cass’s gaze for a moment before shrugging. “Around the time we did that.”

“And to be fair we didn’t know it was that big.” His sister threw out before pausing. “Or that it breathed fire.”

The older man inhaled slowly before exhaling even slow-er. “Right, so I’m guessing that’s when the fight that the news reporters caught happened.”

“Yep.” He nodded, not pointing out that the two of them had been unconscious for a couple minutes there, because an angry Sam was infinitely better than a concerned Sam.

(He merely cares about your wellbeing.) Grace told him. (Honestly, having a foster father who cares is nice for a change.)

(Fuck, that I’d rather keep my freedom than ‘kindness’.) Sin spat rejecting the idea of ‘family’. (Hey, you, me, and Cass are all we need, buddy boy.)

(You know we could do with one less voice in this head.) Grace agreed dryly.

(...)

(No, I didn’t mean you.)

Sam ran a hand down his face. “Ugh, I’m going to have to talk to DeSade to deal with this mess.”

“Uh, why?” He blinked. “I mean, it’s not like we’re covering up the town’s weirdness.”

Sam gave him a dry look.

“Uh, since when have we been covering up the town’s weirdness?” He felt the need to ask, because he had not gotten that memo given just how many people knew about the town’s weirdness.

“We aren’t hiding it from the town, we’re hiding it from the people outside of the town.” Sam explained taking a huff of his cigar. “Last thing we need is a bunch of outsiders coming in and messing with things they don’t understand.”

“Should we feel offended by that?” Cass asked with a half-hearted grimace.

“You’ve been here a year, and are still here. As far as this town is concerned you’re a fellow dweller of Blackwell.” Sam waved her off. “We mostly just want to keep Sanctuary and the Hero’s guild off of our land.”

“Then why did they play that fight on the news?” He frowned.

“Because Bobby fuller is fucking dick bag looking to make it big and move to New Haven.” Sam growled before shaking his head. “Either way since it’s DeSade’s job to keep a lid on things I’ve got to talk to him.”

“Well that’s going to be fun.” Cass laughed. “Especially since you renamed the street he lives on dead cop and prostitute junction last week.”

“Still wondering how you pulled that off by the way.”

“Lots of bribes and blackmail.” Sam admitted taking his suit jacket off of his chair. “Which is how I’m going to get him to clean up this mess.”

“Just be glad he’s mellowed out since Edna gave her summer camp to that one kid.” Chris told the old man as she walked past. “At least now he won’t send demon assassins to kill you in the middle of the night.”

“Only because I have you kids as meat shields.” Sam scoffed. “Moment you guys go to school he sends a small horde after me.”

“Is that why you let us cut so much?” Cass asked.

“Wait, Blackwell has a summer camp?” He asked at the same time because the idea of a summer camp in the middle of these woods was insane given what he knew lived in it. “How many kids get eaten each year?”

“Oh, everyone knows not to touch the kids of that camp, even the town demons know not to fuck with those kids.” Chris scoffed, taking a soda from the fridge. “Really you should ask your girlfriend about it, Rosalind has gone every year since she was like twelve.”

“She’s not…” He bit back his reflexive response knowing that the denial was just as damning.

“Right, well as amusing as it is to make fun of the love lives of teenagers, I do have to clean this mess up, so I’ll be going.” Sam told them, before snapping his fingers as he reached the door to the kitchen. “Ah, before I forget.”

Their foster father pointed at Cass. “Grounded, no dark magic or fight clubs for two weeks.”

Then the old man pointed at him. “Grounded, no fighting anything, no caffeine, no watching TV static, and no dating my archenemy’s daughter for two weeks.”

“Come on, that's not fair!” He frowned, given how he was getting twice the punishment just because he had a split personality. (Half that stuff is how I keep them in line!)

“You’re right.” Sam nodded. “The creepy black eyed kid probably did nothing wrong so he can still hijack your body to watch TV static at three A.M. but I know the red eyed asshole and Felicia fought so they’re both grounded too.”

(Fucking bullshit!)

(No this is fair, if overly so… Though I do wish he’d learn my name already.)

(...)

(Glad to see someone is happy about this.)

“If you don’t like being grounded don’t get me sued.” Sam told them unsympathetically. “I never grounded Aiden or Jericho because those boys at least made sure nothing could be proven in a court of law.”

“That or they’d burn the house down if you tried.” Chris pointed out.

His eyes met Cass’s for a moment.

“The moment I decided to foster again I had Edna make everything fireproof.” Sam admitted bluntly.

“Damn.” The siblings cursed.