“‘Perhaps you need to take a break.’ I do not need to take a break. I’m a grown woman, and I’m perfectly capable of handling myself. Rotten busy body.”
Standing in front of her closet, Miranda mumbled to herself complaints directed with the soft, semi-friendly vitriol of her nature towards the Vice Provost of the college. After years of badgering from the badger that she should “be careful of overwork” and “enjoy some of the time she’s

“Better luck next time.”

In spite of the soft, quiet voice she used, Bea was feeling pretty confident as she stepped into the leader’s lounge of the gym. HER gym. The fighting trainer had been looking forward to this for a while. She’d been training across Galar for the day she would win the right to run her own gym. And now, she’d been chosen. Over that freaky kid with the mask.
Allister stood in the door behind her, slouched, messy black hair hanging about that

Jessie gave a heavy, relaxed sigh as she sank into the warm waters of the hot springs. She needed this. Dealing with James and Meowth’s messes was tiring. Dealing with an endless litany of twerps was even worse. She’d been promising herself a day to herself for a while. The day had finally arrived.
Isolated, the quiet hot springs was the perfect place for her to relax. Nestled between two stone outcroppings, like a small booth set into the spring just for her, Jessie reclined against

Hanging out with Bea, hanging out with Bea, hanging out with Bea, hanging out.
Mae stepped through the empty streets of Possum Springs, the low smell of carbon in the air, the fog sitting on the town like a pet on her shoulder. She stopped a few times to stare up at the powerlines tracing like veins across the arms of the empty sky, bruised with evening, coming down over everyone in the embrace of night.
She ought to be afraid of night after all she’d seen, but, eh. Nah. No. She’d r

A sandwich. Of course.
Toffee sighed, adjusting his tie. More of Luto’s idiocy trickling down through his subordinates. That fool may be gone from the castle, but his senseless behavior still remained. The monsters were still setting the table in the grandhall for lunch as if Toffee were a child at school. Boo Fly had even prepared a stack of cushions on the chair at the head, where the sandwich sat waiting. As if Toffee needed a booster seat.
Idiots. He’d been reduced to using idiot

Hester
was excited. He kept drumming his foot against the floorboard of his
car like a child in line for a new film. The young man did have a
youthful face for his age, with a boyish, spiky haircut and the peek
of a tattoo of an atom just under the collar of his shirt. The shirt
blazed with pink and blue and white, with several buttons along the
collar, a few with stylized trans gender symbols, a few with Hester’s
Smash mains (Dedede and Roy, of course).
What
really had Hester excited was what

The
Bad End wasn’t the sort of dive most folks went to already
hammered. The joint, nestled amid the brownstones of the buildings
beside it, a nest tucked away down a set of concrete steps sunk into
the pavement out beside the building, neon sign flashing overhead,
was never short of carousers. Grabby-handed revellers, rubbing and
grinding or looking for something to squeeze whether it be soft or
firm, were certainly not unknown to the club. Heck, they were
celebrated, especially on hot, muggy

He’d
found the book in the archives, buried under 1700s New England
journals and periodicals. At first, Bel had assumed it was just
another of the witch hysteria relics, some propaganda about how
pagans kill and eat babies. But as he started flipping through it,
the librarian realized he’d found the real thing.
Instructions
for summoning a demon.
He
sat on the information for a little while, trying to get his head
around it. Trying to digest all the different options he had. The
book made ex