Fic: How DG Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Her Pissy Soul.
I watched The Golden Compass for the first time. Therefore, have absolute crack. Also, you will never be able to convince me Glimbrose's soul isn't named Lauhakasi. Never.
Title: How DG Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Her Pissy Soul.
Rating: PG!
Pairing: Gen, although I hint at DG/Raw. Because d'awww, DG/Raw~ ♥
Warnings: Crack, and intimidating squirrels.
Summary: When a spell backfires, everyone gets to have an animal for a pet/soul/etc. Results vary.
How DG Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Her Pissy Soul
DG woke up with Tutor lying unconscious nearby, a dog that looked identical to Toto curled up next to him. She didn’t just wake up, though. DG woke up thanks to the very pissed off white and brown cat that pressed its paw into her windpipe. When she shrieked and batted it off her, she could swear someone just smacked her in the side.
“Stop it! Stop it!” the cat roared, voice pained as he curled up into a ball, and she does, staring at the cat while it uncurls in a look so relieved that it makes DG feel relieved too. “Oh, thank God. Alright. No more hurting me, because I’m you. Got it?”
DG stared at the cat. “You’re a cat, so no. I don’t get it.”
The cat glared at her, and bit its own paw. DG gasped at the pain in her hand, staring at the cat in disbelief. He twitched his tail, looking smug. “My name’s Cartric. And you, DG, are in a lot of trouble.”
Which was, of course, when an elephant named Yekan came charging into the room, Raw on top of it and desperately screaming her name at the top of his lungs.
---
After an hour, DG had learned that everyone in the castle’s suddenly magically connected to an animal with a funky name that knows everything about them and what’s going on. She’d learned that apparently her soul was a bitchy, dry cat that was bigger than any house cat she’d ever seen and wasn’t afraid to use his claws. She’d learned that Cain was eerily good at adapting, since he and his big golden retriever-slash-wolfdog named Sturm had more or less woken up together, gone “huh,” and started helping out the other far more frantic people around him. She’d learned that Raw was secretly an enormous elephant at heart instead of a lion, that Tutor’s soul really was named Toto, and that Azkadellia’s was apparently still a kitten, even if it looked like it would grow into an enormous tiger in the end. She’d learned her mother was a weird bird, her dad was a goofy bird, and that Jeb was an angry lizard.
She’d also learned that Glitch was very, very good at hide-and-seek when he felt like it.
“I woke up and there was a noise and they were gone,” one of the lab techs sobbed at them, arms around a greyhound that seemed like it was the one really doing the comforting. Cartric had been about to make a snide comment, but one of the good things about having Cain around right then was that Cain had Sturm around, and that meant Cartric was intimidated just enough to keep his meaner thoughts to himself.
“Do you think they felt threatened?” Cain asked, but the lab tech didn’t do anything but hold on a little tighter to the poor dog, so Raw, Cain, DG, a cat, a dog, and an elephant named Yekan walked out of the castle.
“It was probably harder for them, what with the brain situation,” Yekan mused. They were all sitting on top of the easygoing elephant’s back while she wandered and they tried to think of where Glitch and/or Ambrose would go if they suddenly had a magical animal attached to them.
“Could be that the daemon was so confused and spliced that it just dragged them away,” Cartric suggested.
“Or Glitch wandered off and his animal ran after them,” Cain said, and it sounded more like a knowing grumble than anything else. Sturm made a scoffing noise that somehow made DG think she was agreeing.
“Seems most likely,” Sturm said. “What do you think his daemon is?”
“Ugly and twisted and spliced down the middle,” Cartric said immediately, and DG didn’t care that she’d feel it when she whacked the cat lightly. Cartric was a big boy and he should have known better.
“Won’t know till we see,” Raw said solemnly, and DG tried to ignore how adorable he looked when Yekan’s trunk wrapped comfortingly around his arm and he patted her back with a small, happy smile.
---
There were a lot of things DG had been preparing herself for when they managed to stumble across Glitch and/or Ambrose. A rabid, pitch-black squirrel running up Yekan and almost roaring at them had not been one of those things.
“Go away! Go away go away go away!” the squirrel yelled, and despite the thing being less than a foot tall, Sturm had her ears against her head and Cartric had actually climbed onto DG’s shoulder and started hissing. At the first sign of a hiss, though, the squirrel pointed straight at him. “Don’t you start with me, mister, or you’ll be in a world of pain!”
“…We’re. Um. We’re looking for Glitch or Ambrose?” DG asked.
The squirrel’s arms tucked in to cross over her chest. “Don’t sound too sure of yourself there, kiddo.”
“We are looking for him,” Cain said, glaring at the squirrel. The squirrel glared right back. “And we are going to find them.”
The squirrel’s arms dropped to the side, and for some reason seeing the squirrel go back onto four legs was almost intimidating. “You and what army?”
“We kind of have an elephant,” DG said. “And you’re sort of a squirrel, so I think we’d probably be able to-”
“KASI!” Glitch’s voice shouted out, and the squirrel twitched towards the voice. “Kasi, NO! Get off that elephant and get back down here, young lady! I don’t care how big an animal is, if you shift on top of that elephant and hurt it I swear-”
“Why is everyone shouting at me?!” the squirrel - Kasi, apparently - shouted back, and actually complied, scrambling back down the frozen and slightly terrified Yekan to meet the approaching figure. She was still talking, but the squirrel was so damn tiny-
And then the squirrel was an enormous black horse.
“Huh,” Cain said.
“Yeah,” DG agreed.
And then Glitch was there, grabbing the horse by the face and staring straight into its eyes, saying something very firm. The horse’s tail swished irritably, but her head nodded, and then Ambrose was swinging himself onto her back and heading towards them, still lecturing the animal.
“-can’t believe you threatened them! You even kidnapped me, Lauha, how is that being a good soulmate animal thing? I didn’t even get to say anything to my friends before you grab me and tear out of the room-”
“-how was I supposed to know you’d be okay?! You were unconscious when I showed up, Ambrose, I had to get you somewhere safe-”
“-don’t you know that friends wouldn’t hurt each other? Honestly, Lauha, you’re ridiculous-”
“-well when you wake up with the other part of your soul sitting next to you-”
“-I’ve kind of already done that. Twice-”
“GUYS. ANIMALS,” DG shouted at them, and Ambrose and his horse - which was apparently named Lauha, unlike the squirrel which was named Kasi. “We need to get everyone back into the castle so we can reverse the spell.”
Glitch frowned up at them. “Why do we need to reverse it?”
The silence that followed that question wasn’t reassuring in the slightest.
---
Lauha-kasi the belligerent horse-squirrel stayed a belligerent horse on the way back to the castle, mostly because it seemed like she didn’t trust Yekan enough to not drop him, and the whole way, DG found herself contemplating whether or not they really should get rid of the spell.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Cartric said from her shoulder, like he could read her mind. For all she knew, maybe he could. “We’re a benefit because we can do things humans can’t and we can back you up in a fight, but we’re a vulnerability because we’re literally your soul walking around on its own. If I get hurt, you get hurt, and vice versa.”
“It seems like people are adapting pretty well, though,” DG commented when they got through the gates. It’d only been a couple hours, and already the servants were wandering around with their animals at their side, buckets in dogs’ mouths as they trotted next to their other half, birds carrying things in their talons while they flew and chatted. People were smiling more than she’d seen them smile in a long while. DG frowned at Cartric’s speckled face. “Why’d I get the pissy cat? Az’s is all cuddly.”
“Why’d I get the snippy, magically-inept girl?” Cartric muttered, snuggled warmly around her neck, and dropped to sleep, a comforting weight of honesty hanging on her shoulders.
---
Three months later, nobody seemed particularly surprised to see a peaceful elephant lounging by the lake or a horse standing in Ambrose’s lab shouting “What are you looking at?!” at the unlucky visitors that managed to find their way deeper into the castle. Five months later, it was suddenly a mark of great worth if you had a soul animal (“Daemons! We’re daemons, you stupid woman!” Cartric would howl at her, and DG would wonder if putting a cat muzzle on him would make her mute too), to the point that eventually they all got so fed up with the infighting in court that DG cast the same incorrect spell all over again in Central, resulting in a mass wave of new ‘daemons’ and a massive trend in getting the most ridiculously over-the-top animal accessories people could find. It practically made a brand new economy in Central. There was a Collar District after a year, and it was still going strong three years down the road, when DG and Az (who now had an enormous white tiger named Phell following her around) expanded the spell to cover the whole of the O.Z.
Weddings got a big stranger, considering sometimes people expected their animals to mate too (and cats and elephants were not made to agree with one another). Places got bigger doors for people who had horse-squirrels. People looked at their feet a lot more than they used to when they walked around.
One night, DG and Cartric wandered out onto the balcony to see Yekan swimming in the warm lake around the castle, a horse and a dog watching on the beach as she sprayed some water into the air, and she smiled.
“Life’s pretty good, huh?” DG asked.
Cartric twined between her legs, finally jumping up onto the railing to look her straight in the face and give her a cat-smile. “Yeah. It is.”
Title: How DG Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Her Pissy Soul.
Rating: PG!
Pairing: Gen, although I hint at DG/Raw. Because d'awww, DG/Raw~ ♥
Warnings: Crack, and intimidating squirrels.
Summary: When a spell backfires, everyone gets to have an animal for a pet/soul/etc. Results vary.
How DG Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Her Pissy Soul
DG woke up with Tutor lying unconscious nearby, a dog that looked identical to Toto curled up next to him. She didn’t just wake up, though. DG woke up thanks to the very pissed off white and brown cat that pressed its paw into her windpipe. When she shrieked and batted it off her, she could swear someone just smacked her in the side.
“Stop it! Stop it!” the cat roared, voice pained as he curled up into a ball, and she does, staring at the cat while it uncurls in a look so relieved that it makes DG feel relieved too. “Oh, thank God. Alright. No more hurting me, because I’m you. Got it?”
DG stared at the cat. “You’re a cat, so no. I don’t get it.”
The cat glared at her, and bit its own paw. DG gasped at the pain in her hand, staring at the cat in disbelief. He twitched his tail, looking smug. “My name’s Cartric. And you, DG, are in a lot of trouble.”
Which was, of course, when an elephant named Yekan came charging into the room, Raw on top of it and desperately screaming her name at the top of his lungs.
---
After an hour, DG had learned that everyone in the castle’s suddenly magically connected to an animal with a funky name that knows everything about them and what’s going on. She’d learned that apparently her soul was a bitchy, dry cat that was bigger than any house cat she’d ever seen and wasn’t afraid to use his claws. She’d learned that Cain was eerily good at adapting, since he and his big golden retriever-slash-wolfdog named Sturm had more or less woken up together, gone “huh,” and started helping out the other far more frantic people around him. She’d learned that Raw was secretly an enormous elephant at heart instead of a lion, that Tutor’s soul really was named Toto, and that Azkadellia’s was apparently still a kitten, even if it looked like it would grow into an enormous tiger in the end. She’d learned her mother was a weird bird, her dad was a goofy bird, and that Jeb was an angry lizard.
She’d also learned that Glitch was very, very good at hide-and-seek when he felt like it.
“I woke up and there was a noise and they were gone,” one of the lab techs sobbed at them, arms around a greyhound that seemed like it was the one really doing the comforting. Cartric had been about to make a snide comment, but one of the good things about having Cain around right then was that Cain had Sturm around, and that meant Cartric was intimidated just enough to keep his meaner thoughts to himself.
“Do you think they felt threatened?” Cain asked, but the lab tech didn’t do anything but hold on a little tighter to the poor dog, so Raw, Cain, DG, a cat, a dog, and an elephant named Yekan walked out of the castle.
“It was probably harder for them, what with the brain situation,” Yekan mused. They were all sitting on top of the easygoing elephant’s back while she wandered and they tried to think of where Glitch and/or Ambrose would go if they suddenly had a magical animal attached to them.
“Could be that the daemon was so confused and spliced that it just dragged them away,” Cartric suggested.
“Or Glitch wandered off and his animal ran after them,” Cain said, and it sounded more like a knowing grumble than anything else. Sturm made a scoffing noise that somehow made DG think she was agreeing.
“Seems most likely,” Sturm said. “What do you think his daemon is?”
“Ugly and twisted and spliced down the middle,” Cartric said immediately, and DG didn’t care that she’d feel it when she whacked the cat lightly. Cartric was a big boy and he should have known better.
“Won’t know till we see,” Raw said solemnly, and DG tried to ignore how adorable he looked when Yekan’s trunk wrapped comfortingly around his arm and he patted her back with a small, happy smile.
---
There were a lot of things DG had been preparing herself for when they managed to stumble across Glitch and/or Ambrose. A rabid, pitch-black squirrel running up Yekan and almost roaring at them had not been one of those things.
“Go away! Go away go away go away!” the squirrel yelled, and despite the thing being less than a foot tall, Sturm had her ears against her head and Cartric had actually climbed onto DG’s shoulder and started hissing. At the first sign of a hiss, though, the squirrel pointed straight at him. “Don’t you start with me, mister, or you’ll be in a world of pain!”
“…We’re. Um. We’re looking for Glitch or Ambrose?” DG asked.
The squirrel’s arms tucked in to cross over her chest. “Don’t sound too sure of yourself there, kiddo.”
“We are looking for him,” Cain said, glaring at the squirrel. The squirrel glared right back. “And we are going to find them.”
The squirrel’s arms dropped to the side, and for some reason seeing the squirrel go back onto four legs was almost intimidating. “You and what army?”
“We kind of have an elephant,” DG said. “And you’re sort of a squirrel, so I think we’d probably be able to-”
“KASI!” Glitch’s voice shouted out, and the squirrel twitched towards the voice. “Kasi, NO! Get off that elephant and get back down here, young lady! I don’t care how big an animal is, if you shift on top of that elephant and hurt it I swear-”
“Why is everyone shouting at me?!” the squirrel - Kasi, apparently - shouted back, and actually complied, scrambling back down the frozen and slightly terrified Yekan to meet the approaching figure. She was still talking, but the squirrel was so damn tiny-
And then the squirrel was an enormous black horse.
“Huh,” Cain said.
“Yeah,” DG agreed.
And then Glitch was there, grabbing the horse by the face and staring straight into its eyes, saying something very firm. The horse’s tail swished irritably, but her head nodded, and then Ambrose was swinging himself onto her back and heading towards them, still lecturing the animal.
“-can’t believe you threatened them! You even kidnapped me, Lauha, how is that being a good soulmate animal thing? I didn’t even get to say anything to my friends before you grab me and tear out of the room-”
“-how was I supposed to know you’d be okay?! You were unconscious when I showed up, Ambrose, I had to get you somewhere safe-”
“-don’t you know that friends wouldn’t hurt each other? Honestly, Lauha, you’re ridiculous-”
“-well when you wake up with the other part of your soul sitting next to you-”
“-I’ve kind of already done that. Twice-”
“GUYS. ANIMALS,” DG shouted at them, and Ambrose and his horse - which was apparently named Lauha, unlike the squirrel which was named Kasi. “We need to get everyone back into the castle so we can reverse the spell.”
Glitch frowned up at them. “Why do we need to reverse it?”
The silence that followed that question wasn’t reassuring in the slightest.
---
Lauha-kasi the belligerent horse-squirrel stayed a belligerent horse on the way back to the castle, mostly because it seemed like she didn’t trust Yekan enough to not drop him, and the whole way, DG found herself contemplating whether or not they really should get rid of the spell.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Cartric said from her shoulder, like he could read her mind. For all she knew, maybe he could. “We’re a benefit because we can do things humans can’t and we can back you up in a fight, but we’re a vulnerability because we’re literally your soul walking around on its own. If I get hurt, you get hurt, and vice versa.”
“It seems like people are adapting pretty well, though,” DG commented when they got through the gates. It’d only been a couple hours, and already the servants were wandering around with their animals at their side, buckets in dogs’ mouths as they trotted next to their other half, birds carrying things in their talons while they flew and chatted. People were smiling more than she’d seen them smile in a long while. DG frowned at Cartric’s speckled face. “Why’d I get the pissy cat? Az’s is all cuddly.”
“Why’d I get the snippy, magically-inept girl?” Cartric muttered, snuggled warmly around her neck, and dropped to sleep, a comforting weight of honesty hanging on her shoulders.
---
Three months later, nobody seemed particularly surprised to see a peaceful elephant lounging by the lake or a horse standing in Ambrose’s lab shouting “What are you looking at?!” at the unlucky visitors that managed to find their way deeper into the castle. Five months later, it was suddenly a mark of great worth if you had a soul animal (“Daemons! We’re daemons, you stupid woman!” Cartric would howl at her, and DG would wonder if putting a cat muzzle on him would make her mute too), to the point that eventually they all got so fed up with the infighting in court that DG cast the same incorrect spell all over again in Central, resulting in a mass wave of new ‘daemons’ and a massive trend in getting the most ridiculously over-the-top animal accessories people could find. It practically made a brand new economy in Central. There was a Collar District after a year, and it was still going strong three years down the road, when DG and Az (who now had an enormous white tiger named Phell following her around) expanded the spell to cover the whole of the O.Z.
Weddings got a big stranger, considering sometimes people expected their animals to mate too (and cats and elephants were not made to agree with one another). Places got bigger doors for people who had horse-squirrels. People looked at their feet a lot more than they used to when they walked around.
One night, DG and Cartric wandered out onto the balcony to see Yekan swimming in the warm lake around the castle, a horse and a dog watching on the beach as she sprayed some water into the air, and she smiled.
“Life’s pretty good, huh?” DG asked.
Cartric twined between her legs, finally jumping up onto the railing to look her straight in the face and give her a cat-smile. “Yeah. It is.”