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Fantasy Cosmical Glitch ( ellarose & starboob. )

"Hey!" Juno points her finger at the faerie, "I didn't fucking make you sleep in your fucking underwear. That was all you, honey. I'm also not the fucking reason we're in this fucking mess. If you could control your fucking cube, we'd be peacefully sailing over the valley and not through the southeastern skies. Thanks for that by the way, super fucking helpful! Really got us closer to treasure." Yeah, come to think of it, that should be proof enough that she ought to get sent to the Duchess stat. …Or maybe not the Duchess seeing as she is about halfway around the world thanks to that magic pain in the ass. 'Bet that was her fucking plan. Get me somewhere I've got minimal contacts.' Minimal but not zero, some optimistic part reminds herself. There are still some gangs that haven't been completely crushed by the stewards that she could probably contact. It'd be a huge hit to her profit margin, but at this point she's pretty fucking convinced she'd sell this bitch for a dried pinto bean. (Okay, so why not let her go with Clay?)

There are a million and three reason why Arnette shouldn't go with Clay. That's just off the top of her head, give her some more time to think and she could come up with a comprehensive list that would be so long it'd mummify the whole goddamn planet! Even so, the pirate doesn't think she needs to explain herself. If that little twerp wants to end up as taxidermied footstool then far be it from her to stop her! (Never mind the faerie dust tidbit, Juno’s not thinking of that.) And, you know, maybe she should just cut her fucking losses now, since the faerie is the worst fucking person she has ever met. (Easily not even true, but Juno's anger only lets her see an inch past her nose so sue her for forgetting the actual worst fucking people she has ever met.) Her and that stupid cube can become inferno fuel for all she cares.

Just as Juno's rolling her eyes and getting ready to just straight up ditch the captive, the zombie bursts through her skeleton brigade and bites her fucking shoulder. Like, what the fuck?! It has a sword, dammit! Can things just stop biting her for one goddamn minute!!!!!!! (No, that's not even an appropriate amount of exclamation points.) "Fuck!" she shouts as blunt pain radiates down her back and arm. She struggles to get a grip on this brainless soldier and once she has an opening, she jams her thumb into its eye (splrch); she digs around until she has a proper imprint of its skull then forces its head to burst. Back to the resident pastel idiot. "You wanna mess with that sororicidal maniac, he's all fucking yours, babe!" She shoves the headless zombie's body towards the faerie. "Don't invite me to the wedding."

Naturally the other four zombies and Clay are now bounding towards them, having broken through the skeletons. The situation above deck doesn't seem to be an improvement, either, since she can hear more boots stomping overhead. 'Sweet Mother!' Well, no point in fucking crying over shit. With a deep sigh, she allows herself a half second of pity before rolling up her sleeves and doing what Juno does best––make a fool of the stewards.

With one hand covering the wound on her shoulder, she starts pull blood from it like strings, weaving them to form a ward that she casts towards Clay and his crew. When the zombies touch it they burst to ash instantly while Captain Dickbag just smacks into the barrier and aggravates his poor little nose. Heh. Won’t last forever though and Juno’s not planning on sticking around when the ward breaks. This time around? She’s also not gonna shove the faerie along. Her investment has reduced to zilch so if she wants to chance this big bag planet on her own, well good luck! (It’s better this way, anyway, because now Juno can go back to protecting who's truly important—herself!)

Above deck is chaos. It’s a mixture of uniformed zombies and live power clashing with her skeleton crew. Clay’s fleet has constructed a few bridges to connect their ships together and stewards run across them to board her ship. The colossal construct she made last night is currently working to toss the bridges to the side, along with the stewards on them. However, before she can even feel any semblance of pride in her crew’s momentary lapse in not being entirely fucking useless, the pirate’s attention is stolen by the sheer number of vessels surrounding her own. “Fuck. Fuck,” she mutters, rushing over to one side of the ship. She leans over the railing to look for an escape and finds that she's surrounded on all sides, save for below. “Well, this is fucking excessive for one measly pirate, asshole.” Though it is flattering Clay thinks she’s worth the trouble. Might as well give him a run for his coin. Heh. So if the only option is…

She grabs a wandering skeleton and pulls it towards herself. (This one has a glowing orange aura.) “Two—“

“Abigail.”

“—whatever, tell the crew to secure themselves to the ship." She then explains with a grin, "We’re plummeting.”

“Hmm…?" two (Abigail) hums in a daze, head tilted up, her glowing eyes following some falling ash, "What was that, cap'm?”

“Just do it!” Admittedly, trusting the space cadet with this is not the move, but three (Marjorie) isn’t trailing her and one (Inez) is nowhere to be seen so her options are fucking limited. (Well, losing a few skeletons to being fucking arrested? Yeah, Juno will take the fucking loss.) She dashes across the deck, heading towards the bridge and only cutting down the bodies who stand in her way––were this situation not so perilous, she might have chosen to take down more of Clay's people, but she doesn't need those ships getting any fucking closer. No thanks!

Once at the controls, she dumps some bone shards from her pocket onto the floor, willing them to form webs around her feet and calves to anchor her to the ship. She uses the same trick to keep one hand fixed on the wheel. Well, here's to hoping Juno can pull this off because she technically only has one shot. (Of course, if she misses at least she'll die and won't have to deal with stupid faeries or the stewards.)

She kills the engine. The ship drops.
 
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"I don't want to fu--" Lettie yips and swiftly ducks to the left as the decapitated zombie body is rudely hurled at her. As it smashes into the wall behind her she shoots the infuriating pirate a glare. "Hey!" But it seems like Juno's too busy to humor her as she creates a boundary that effectively disintegrates the zombies and stops that snobby Clay character in his tracks. Hm. Vaugely curious, she tilts her head at the display and takes mental notes about the magic she's witnessing (for strategic reasons, of course!)... and then realizes belatedly that she's totally been ditched! Geez. Is it really such a chore to give a lady the answers she asks for when she asks for them? Apparently so! She would've have fucking helped if her captor had shown her just a little common decency.

"Well, if that's how it's going to be..." Lettie sighs, rolls her neck, and then flashes the skeleton a mischievous grin. "It's been real, Marjorie!"

Lettie grounds her heels into the floor and braces herself, her eyes slowly flitting shut. When she opens her them again, they light up like stars and the rest of her body brightens, taking on that same phantasmic glow. Like this, she takes the opposite path the annoying pirate did, sprinting in the direction they'd come from instead. The faerie picks up so much speed that she essentially skating on air... ready, steady, now! When she reaches the boundary, she flickers and phases right through it as if it were nothing, nonchalant and unbothered on her way past Clay and his broken nose. With a satisfied smirk, the faerie fetches the bundle of clothing that Juno had so rudely dropped in front of the bedroom and shuts herself inside. There's no telling how much time she'll have considering all the jostling and noise from above... so in the end, it truly is a good thing she's mastered the art of the quick change. Like, she totally wasn't lying when she said she knew it'd serve her in a pinch some day!

Color bleeds through Lettie's ethereal figure as she seamlessly shuts off her magic to conserve it. She discards the pirate's old jacket with the elegant flick of her wrist. Then she holds the wall to steady herself as the ship rocks, shimmying into her clothes at long last. Mhm. That's better. That's not the end of it, though. (Because please, she won't be caught dead repeating the same outfit two days in a row!) With her gloriously quick thinking, her choice of attire is immediate and she swiftly traces the appropriate glyphs to create a badass, black little number. 'Cause if she's got to kick some ass to get out of this mess, it'd be tragic if she didn't look the part.

Lettie strikes a sexy pose, gazing down at herself to decide whether or not she's content to go out like this. Could be the last outfit she ever wears, considering the sharp nosedive her life expectancy's taken ever since she crash-landed on this fucking ship. She traces glyph to open up her bag, reaching inside it for her mirror... but just as she does, her gaze slowly pans over to catch that absolute creep Clay ogling her in the now open doorway. When did he get there!?

"Were you watching me change!? Because if you were, that's super gross!" Lettie huffs, appalled. Not that he would've seen anything he hasn't, considering he's already seen her in her underwear... but still! It's the principle of the thing. Ew. What a fucking douchebag! Except it slowly, slowly dawns on her that he's probably not gawking at her body. (Even if it's an absolute stunner.) But no. She's sharp enough to catch onto the fact that his eyes are tracking her wings. Gulp. "You don't ge-- eek!"

The ship jerks violently, knocking the contents of Lettie's open purse onto the floor. Including... shit! Including the cube! Diving down, she catches it between her hands just as there's a sharp, sudden drop. As she loses the sensation of solid ground beneath her, the tiny magical artifact warms her skin, each face glowing with the oddly shaped glyphs she saw the first time...Oh stars. Her eyes widen before snapping shut as she recalls just how badly they'd burned the first time around. Within seconds, a blinding light swallows the room and pulses outward, taking the entire ship with it.
 
'Alright! Don't fuck up!' the pirate encourages as the ship plummets, leaving her stomach somewhere 10,000 feet above her head. Using every ounce of strength she has, she focuses on the monitor flashing 'ERROR!' 'ERROR!' 'ERROR!' which she understands to mean something is fucking wrong. Probably the ship falling. Probably. She watches the altitude report drop, knowing only roughly when she ought to crank the engines back on. A few more fee–– "Alright, let's goo!!" Desperately, she forces the lever up, closing her eyes as possible death approaches. It feels like eons pass before she hears the engines whir to life, bringing several of the monitors back online. She pulls the steering wheel up with all her strength and the ship starts to slow down its descent. Yeah, she's not fucking dying or getting arrested today, bitches! Suck on that!

The pirate actually smiles knowing she just fucking pulled that off. 'Fuck yeah! Ugh, Juno, you're the fucking best fucking pilot in the skies!'

The ship hovers a bit but before Juno can get too carried away, the engines crap out, not happy with that stunt. The ship plops gently (thankfully) on the surface. At first, the captain isn't aware of the change of scenery. It isn't until she breathes out a string of curses that she notices her breath in front of her. Like. An actual puff of smoke escapes her mouth? The temperature in the bridge is rapidly dropping as well and when Juno takes in a deep breath, the air smells... It smells... She doesn't have the vocabulary to even describe what she's experiencing. She just knows it's wrong. It's...

It's...

Crisp. Fresh. Clear. It's not poison and if not for the air itself being so damn frigid, that realization alone freezes her. It also forces the immediate conclusion that this is not her planet. (Her home, if she dared to make such an association with that damn polluted rock.) Her skin prickles, the hairs all over her body rising as the icy air bites into her flesh. Her cheeks feel sliced open as they redden. She's never felt cold before. Not like this. (Nights on the ground could be chilling, but never were they cold. Her planet supplied so much heat that the ground beat it back against them at night. There was hardly a need for a campfires to keep warm. She's aware, of course, of ice but has only ever experienced it in beverages. The Duchess and a few of her other wealthier connections had chilled homes, but nothing like this.) Her entire body feels like it wants to cave inwards for warmth. It's an odd sensation and she hasn't decided whether or not she likes it. If anything, she's suspicious of it. Suspicious that it's trying to kill her, more specifically.

Speaking of things that are trying to kill her, when she wipes away a spot in the fogged glass to survey the deck, unsurprisingly, it's cleared of zombies and live stewards. She expects their bodies will be falling from the sky any second now. Her skeletons seem mostly fine––some have joints bent in wrong directions, heads spun around, and limbs detached but overall not bad. Before she can celebrate or worry, however, the chill demands her attention, forcing her entire body into ceaseless shivers. She regrets handing her jacket to that stupid idiot (who didn't even say thanks for offering her cover from that disgusting pile of shit, so she's never going to try out that 'considerate' shtick ever again). With impending frostbite taking priority above all else, she turns to exit the bridge and when she opens the door? Juno narrowly misses a steaming charred former steward falling face first into the bridge. Oddly, the uniform is largely intact. "What the fuck...?"

As she walks through the ship heading towards the captain's quarters, that first steward wasn't an anomaly. All of those uniformed bozos––zombie and living alike––look as though they have been freshly barbequed. (The smell of burnt flesh fills her nose and would make her gag were she not accustomed to it, thanks to her home life.) "What the fuck?" she repeats, torn between relief and just plain wary. Like, who the fuck is this mysterious pitmaster and are they just waiting to claim her? (She can sorta get why her skeletons would be left alone, given they have no flesh.)

With too much curiosity and maybe a death wish, she decides to ditch the idea of grabbing a coat from her cabin, wanting to head outside immediately. Though still needing something to cover herself, she lifts a coat from one of the very dead stewards. (Oi, it's not the first time she's stolen from a dead person. Pretty common to see a dead body with shoes your size and decide it doesn't have any use for them. Especially when you're barefoot.) Her body immediately saps the warmth from whatever flame claimed the steward, but the cold still fucking bites. So she layers up, kindly accepting donations from those dead idiots, before making it to an exit.

When she's at the exit, she has to shove the door open seeing as something is blocking it. Once it's opened all she sees is white. (From old worn magazines, she knows there used to be pristine mountains covered in white stuff on her homeplanet––snow, she remembers someone calling it––but never had she experienced it for herself or imagined that she would. The concept is seven generations foreign to her.) Left and right, nothing but this smooth cold powder. The sky even looks white––a color she's never known a sky can be––while a red ringed sun hangs high over head, causing the snow to sparkle, almost. Curiously, she sticks her hand into the substance and quickly draws it back when she realizes just how fucking cold this shit is! Yeah, like, it's ice she should have known but still! She kicks some of the stuff up experimentally.

Then, somehow sensing the faerie is near, she very diplomatically comments, "This is your fault. Where the fuck are we?"
 
Lettie blinks slowly, expecting the worst but pleasantly surprised to find that she landed safely on that mean pirate's bed. Brrr. It's cold, though. So cold that she can see her breath puffing out like smoke in front of her face. It's pretty damn hard to resist the temptation to gather the discarded blankets from the floor and curl herself into a cozy little faerie burrito where she could fall into a beautiful dream and wish all of her problems away. But wishing won't do shit. She's not that kind of faerie. So she gets the fuck up because she knows she has to. Welp. Time to see what kind of havoc the cube wreaked this time. With the quick twirl of her finger, she revises her ensemble to represent the change in temperature, magicking herself a long sleeved blouse, pants and boots. (For extra warmth, she takes the coat Juno gave her, transforming it into a soft, plush version that fit her better. Heh. If the pirate catches her, she won't even recognize it!) …Ugh, that pirate. She can only hope she faced the same fate as Clay, who is currently lying facedown on the floor. Seems that not everyone had the pleasure of enduring a soft landing. Oof. Oh well! Lettie smiles. Sucks to be him!

Considering her limited options, Lettie purses her lips. Then she gives the man a knock over the head for good measure (that's what he gets for spying, the bastard!) and then stuffs his unconscious body inside Juno's closet. Once she shoves the nightstand in front of the door, she decides that she's satisfied and brushes her hands together. Which, whew. Her hands are freezing! If only she'd packed her trusty heist gloves before she left home the other day. She breathes into her palms, hoping to defrost and instill some feeling in her fingers.

Now what? With an exhale, Lettie recalls how the contents of her purse scattered onto the floor earlier and quickly sets out to find all of her belongings. Which might as well have been her only belongings so long as she lived this wayward life outside of her own world. (And who knew what she’d need in a pinch out there? Seriously. Sometimes a life or death situation required a tube of lipgloss.) Once that’s taken care of, there’s nothing else keeping her there. She ventures out to explore the ship, wrinkling her nose as she sidesteps burnt stewards and zombies. Yikes. A chill other than the obvious cold of the air skitters up her spine. What happened to them? Briefly she wonders about Juno, whether she ended up barbecued or perhaps flat on her face somewhere like that creep Clay when… she spots the pirate herself in the doorway, the blacks of her clothes and hair making her stand out in stark contrast against the snow that stretched on as far as their eyes could see.

The faerie considers sneaking right on by, assuming she’ll have the element of surprise on her side… when she’s addressed outright. What!? Did Juno have eyes in the back of her head!? (Which— creepy— but that’s besides the point!) How did she know?

Stars. Looks like she’ll have to do this the hard way. Lettie sparks her magic and phases through the wall instead of using the door, shutting it off swiftly as she breezes past the pirate. Just gunning it may not have been the most strategic approach, considering she doesn’t know shit about the terrain— let alone the world— but Juno threatened to break her other wing if she screwed up again and the faerie really doesn’t want to stick around long enough to see whether or not she’ll make good on that threat. So long as she’s got the cube and finds someplace safe and secluded, she can keep jumping until… until she gets lucky and makes it home? A flimsy plan, she’ll admit, but that’s essentially all she’s got to work with. Getting a running start, she chucks a snowball at Juno specifically to piss her off (revenge for the decapitated zombie, bitch!) and bolts daringly through the snow.

After a while Lettie slips forward a few inches, her boots hitting something noticeably harder than soft crunchy snow. Oh. She’s on ice now. Standing on what appears to be a frozen lake, the surface gleaming bright with intricate little crystals. Hm, even better! With a well-timed glyph, she alters her cute winter boots into a pair of equally cute skates and glides across the ice, putting even more distance between that grouchy pirate and herself. Her cheeks are bright and rosy from the cold, but she can’t find it in her to care as the wind tosses her gorgeous lavender locks. Sweet freedom! She’ll never catch me now!

The unchanging white landscape gradually fills out with heaps and mounds of snow. A few pop up out of the ground as if waking from a slumber… revealing baby snow demons underneath? “Aw.” They’re cute! Kind of. If you squint.

Well, they were cute. That is until the largest mound of snow at the back of the group emerges with a groan, shaking a dust of snow all around. As it clears, it reveals a giant (made up of what else but more snow) with unsettlingly vacuous holes for eyes and a mouth. Though there's not a lot of emotion to gauge from those gaping holes in it's mockery of a face, she figures that the thing is angry when it begins slamming it’s big fists down against the ground. Lettie gulps as lightning shaped cracks begin to form in the ice, racing rapidly towards her feet. Oh fucking stars.

“Not cute! Not cute!” Lettie steers herself around in a jiff and skates frantically back in the direction she came from. Because— fine! Fine. She’d rather take her chances with Juno than that abomination. That in mind, she decides to yell out a kindly warning. “You got any cannons on that ship of yours, Juju? ‘Cause you might wanna fire them up!”
 
"Son of bitch!" the pirate swears when the snowball pegs her right in her fucking eye! It forces the pirate to hunch over and clasp the injured eye, applying pressuring, but not rubbing it, while she squeezes it shut. (The stupid little bitch got her scarred eye, too, which is already a sensitive spot for the pirate.) She huffs in angry shallow breaths before snapping her head up, trying to get a visual on the faerie––the fucking faerie who definitely just tried to fucking blind her. There's no other explanation and Juno's honestly just fucking pissed she didn't see this kind of behavior coming. Of course she'd try to disable her captor! It's what the pirate would have done were their positions flipped. Well, she's not going to let the faerie get away with lobbing an ice ball at her. Fuck her for that! "You little bitch," she shouts, chasing after the faerie while simultaneously bending down to collect some snow. She then takes a tooth from her pocket and forms it into a spikey ball around which she packs the snow to form the world's deadliest snowball. (The pirate doesn't get even. She gets revenge.) No one and nothing gets to try to maim her and live to tell the fucking tale!

Her laser focus on her enemy at least distracts from the frosty air and how her extremities feel like they're going to fall off; it also distracts her from the change of terrain. Meaning, she totally eats shit on the ice by slipping forward, dropping her weapon, and landing on her face. Her mess of limbs sprawl out and she spins out on the stupid ice. (Why the fuck would they even invent ice ground? That's so fucking stupid! She's almost positive this is bugy's fault and that she probably turned everything into ice just to mess with Juno.) She scrambles, trying to get a grip on the slippery surface, and falls down several times before she makes some bone icepicks and stakes them into the frozen surface to stop her from moving. Unfortunately, when she looks up she sees the baby snow demons, the giant fucking snow demon, and the biggest pain in her ass all racing towards her. Her eyes widen. "What the fuck did you do? Can you, like, not fucking fuck up for one damn second?!"

Okay, bitching is not solving her problems (unfortunately) so she quickly changes tactics and starts pulling herself towards the non-ice surface using the makeshift icepicks. (Goddess, she is going to kill that fucking faerie. She is going to fucking wring her little neck and dump her ashes in a fucking swamp. She swears to the goddess she will––the second she's done figuring out how to get away from this snow behemoth, it's fucking over for that pastel twerp.) "Cannons?" she repeats, her brain juggling several different tasks at once before it registers just what that O-something chick is suggesting. "It's a fucking pirate ship––of course it has cannons, you dumbfuck!" Translation: good thinking.

Once she hits the ground, she shoves herself upright and starting running towards the ship, looking back once to see the snow giant screech and slam its fists into the ground again. The ground shakes and Juno almost loses her balance. 'Shit, shit, shit!' In a belabored fashion, the ice giant bends over and starts yanking its legs out of the ground to go after them. Yeaaah, on second thought? She doesn't want that thing anywhere near her ship. She changes directions, grabbing her radio device from her pocket and shouting into it, "M-Marjorie! Get the cannons fired up. Don't fucking question me, just do it!! You'll know what you're supposed to be shooting at when you see it."

"Ohh, you used my name!" The skeleton giggles on the other end, giving off the effect that its lounging around the ship somewhere. "Must be seerioouus," it sings, and before Juno can snap at it it continues, "Sure, thing, cap––but it's going to be a while. Everything is fuh-rozen. Say why did you take us here? This not good for my brittle bones. Can you ask Olette if one of her 'face masks' will help my bones?"

As much as she'd like to chew out Marjorie for wanting to inappropriately turn every moment into a gab session, the giant ice freak is commanding her attention. ...By shooting giant fucking icicles towards them. The little snow demons, too, are shooting mini icicles and this just seems really fucking unfair. She makes a sizeable shield out of a rib to defend herself, though it does occur to her to grab the faerie and turn her into a faerie shield. Then she remembers that she has the fucking cube, possibly in her magic circle-thing, and so her dying before Juno can get her hands on that stupid device is a no-go. "Fuuuuck..." That probably means she also has to protect her. Again. The worst fucking thing to happen to her in the last 24 hours. "Olivia," the pirate dashes towards the faerie, bashing a few snow demons with her shield and turning them back into inanimate snow. She then takes a bomb from her belt, sparking it against some flint on one of her bracelets, and tosses it dangerously close to the faerie. (Of course it's not malicious. Oh no, never! She's not at all still upset the faerie tried to blind her, it's just that the giant snow demon is currently reaching for the faerie.) She smirks, "Watch out!"
 
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Lettie lunges for sweet solid earth, making it off of the ice just as it breaks apart into sectioned blocks that float above the pool of water that once slumbered beneath. Remembering to glyph her skates back into proper shoes, she takes a second to catch her breath. Whew. That was way too close! She did not want to go for a swim today, thank you very much! Not now or ever for that matter-- but especially not now. The temperatures of that water would've surely frozen her body solid. And while the faerie would undoubtedly make a beautiful ice sculpture, it could never top the utterly breathtaking experience of meeting her in the flesh-- alive and perfectly intact. Like most of the time, she declares it a tragedy that she will never get the top-tier experience of meeting herself! Truly must be unrivaled to anything else one could do across all of the worlds.

"Eek!" The ground is thrown out from under the faerie when the giant slams down against it once more, causing her to go airborne before she tumbles few feet forward in the snow. She shivers as she lifts herself partway up again, finding flakes caught in her eyelashes.

Oof. That secret part of Lettie that hates herself cringes hardcore. That's what you get! So her meters of fabricated self-love are going a teeny bit haywire amidst all of this non-stop chaos. But sometimes all a lady needs are a few exaggerated pep-talks to get back up on her feet again! Which she does, brushing snow from her thighs as she picks herself back up into a run from the giant who is steadily gaining on her. What good will flowery fucking words do when you're dead? Pushing her focus forward along with her body, she considers the pirate. Juju did have murder in her eyes before. She also sounded... angry. (Heh. Angry is an overly simplistic way to put it--!) But perhaps the pirate sees the light and realizes by now that Lettie's still in possession of the stupid cube that's going to get them out of this mess? (Out of this one and into another, no doubt.) Which means (if she's not petty and dumb as bricks) that she'll still be invested in keeping her safe. At least for now.

It seems that escaping means narrowly escaping death at every turn. How exhausting. Want to know what else is exhausting? The fact that the pirate can't seem to be arsed to get her name right! Odella, Olivia, what's next? Ophelia? Or maybe she's just doing this on purpose. Oh, she totally is, isn't she!?

"My name is not--" Lettie scowls, halting mid-sentence as she notices something hit the ground at her feet. That something being... "A bomb!?"

Of course it's Lettie's first instinct to flap her wings to get away in this moment. (A perfectly natural response, don't judge! She totally panicked and she's quicker when she flies!) Either way, this momentary lapse of judgement is swiftly reprimanded with a dull, sharp stab of pain that skyrockets through them. Tears pearl at the corners of her eyes from the sheer agony of it, her legs nearly buckling as she grinds her teeth against an involuntary cry. "What the fuck, pirate!?" Blinking harshly to staunch the moisture in her eyes before it can freeze, she lunges away and lands in an ungraceful bellyflop just as the bomb explodes with a noisy boom! Then there's nothing but a shrill ringing in her ears. Stars. Is she dead? No... duh. She's not dust. With a whimper she's thankful is too soft for that mean pirate to hear, she ducks her head down as shards of ice patter against her back and the sheer force of the explosion blows her even further away from where she landed. In fact, it sends her tiny body over a mound and then rolling down a steep slope on the other side.

Lettie blacks out as the impact agitates her broken wing yet again, unable to stop her momentum as she's hurled into the deceptively and dangerously deep snow that waits at the bottom. She sinks right down, leaving a distinct faerie-shaped imprint in the otherwise undisturbed snow.

Meanwhile the colossal snow giant is understandably pissed that it just had an arm exploded off. It angles itself backward before leaning forward again, unleashing a scream with the big, gaping hole it has for a mouth. The impact effectively whips up a raging snowstorm, limiting visibility in attempt to buy itself time. It pounds the ground with its remaining arm, collecting heaps of snow and lobbing it onto its empty side in effort to build back the arm it just lost.

The baby snow demons emerge in front of the giant to provide backup, their eyes narrowed as they begin angling their ice spears at Juno.
 
Honestly? Stress of the situation aside, Juno's feeling pretty good. Like, she's starting to understand that smiling really can improve someone's mood. (The last time Marjorie suggested this to her she had, admittedly, punted the stupid skeleton's head across the ship for that supremely unwanted opinion from a bonehead.) Does it matter that the grin tearing up her features is because she's watching the flightless wonder's body get hurled through the air like a useless sack of shit thanks to the bomb she tactfully threw in her direction? She doesn't think so. A smile is a smile, no matter the cost. "Payback's a fucking bitch, ain't it, bugsy?" she laughs, not at all caring whether the faerie can hear her or not, the satisfaction is all the same.

Too bad it's so short lived. Go fucking figure.

Alright, back to business as usual. Meaning, back to Juno's life being one fuckshit scenario after the next––goddess, is it really too much to ask for goddamn peace and quiet?! (Apparently, it is, because the pirate cannot remember the last time she wasn't agitated to the point of needing to punch someone.) Juno could have guessed the bomb would only do so much damage. Like, this fucking thing is massive and made of snow and while she is no snow demon anatomy expert, she could have guessed it wouldn't be a vital loss. She just sort of fucking hoped that it would have at least slowed that motherfucker down! Instead, it only seems to have made it more aggressive and that earsplitting scream alone is enough to disorient the pirate, never mind the snowstorm that it whips up.

At some point she must have dropped the shield she had been using, probably when she slammed her hands over her ears to block out that deafening screech, because it's no where on her person and with the snow fall heavier than ever, she can't fucking spot it. A pretty big fucking issue when those little snow brats are charging at her with their spears. Not to mention that goddamn giant appears to be reforming itself––not fucking fair! Fine. Fine. If this is how it's gonna be, then Juno's got no choice. She grabs her bone whip from her belt and unfurls it, eyeing the incoming opponents. Soon, spears are flying towards the pirate and she's narrowly dodging them (also super fucking unfair that those little shits can just make more spears! What the fucking fuck!). When she sees an opening, she is snaps her whip and hits a few of them in the face, puffing them into the stupid heaps of snow that they are. That at least gives her more room to move across the snowscape and get closer to the giant.

To be honest, when it comes to facing this thing, she really has no clue what strategy to employ. It's not like fighting snow beasts are something she has oodles of experience with––this fact almost makes her wish she was fighting an elder or nuke nightmare––but she's pretty confident that if she keeps hitting it with bombs, it will eventually fall. (Right? Right?!) 'Where's its fucking life force though?' because she's also not going to be a fucking idiot about it knowing she (1) doesn't have an endless supply of bombs on her person and (2) it can reform. 'It's face?' Could be, since that's usually how she's able to take down zombies and malevolent nightmare spirits.

Juno grabs two more bombs from her belt and starts eyeing for an opening––in between, of course, the snow babies screech at her and continue throwing their little ice spears. "Can you get a goddamn new trick, you pieces of shit?!" Her wild eyes are blazing as her irritations grows and it's really a damn shame her glare can't actually vaporize anything, because that would have made this match way fucking easier. Also, maybe she shouldn't have egged on the snow babies... because apparently they can vaporize shit with their gaze. Or at least freezing the snow into solid ice. "Shit, shit, shit!!" she swears, running away from that slippery death surface. (If only that faerie hadn't uselessly been tossed across the field, maybe she'd lend her some back up. ...Or maybe she'd continue proving that she's like everything else in Juno's life––a useless piece of shit.)

Because the goddess hates Juno specifically, the slippery surface catches up with her and, once again, she's wobbling like a baby deer to keep her balance (what the fuck had that O-something chick done to glide across the surface??). The ice giant takes advantage of this and sweeps the pirate into its fist, leaving everything from her torso up free––

Juno acts fast, lighting the two bombs she'd been clutching in her hand and tossing them into the snow bitch's gaping void mouth. "Take that you giant––"

Oh, right.

So if one bomb sent the faerie flying across the snowfield, imagine what two bombs going off does to Juno, coupled with the fact that she'd been lifted into the air. Yeah, so she also goes flying across the snowfield, her body spinning carelessly through the air. After an eternity she smacks into the snow drift at an angle and slides backwards for several yards, landing somewhere near the faerie. By the time she stops, she's buried under several feet of snow. A bruise blooms across her back while the freezing temperature finally catch up to her now that she's buried in ice, but she's too assed to really assess the extent of the damage. Well, at least she took out that son of bitch, right?

(Wrong. The screech in the background indicates she did nothing other than waste two perfectly good bombs.)
 
A loud crunch in the snow nearby rouses the faerie. The subsequent screech quickly catches her back up to speed on the deep shit she's landed herself in this time. Or in this case snow. Lettie groans softly as she blinks her eyes open. Stars. Undoubtedly she would have been in so much more pain right now if it wasn't for the ice soaking through her clothes and effectively numbing her skin to feeling anything at all except for how damned cold it is. (Except by now, it's steadily reaching that point of cold where her body fools her into thinking it's scorching hot instead, prickling like pins and needles down her arms and face.) What now...? Obviously let's start by getting up, bitch. Can't do anything on the ground. On wobbly legs, she pulls herself up to stand. Wow. At her height, the snow is so deep that it reaches at least an inch over her waistline. And it's rising slowly but surely as more snow flutters down in buckets from the sky. The whirling winds cut through her skin like a thousand knives. It would have been fascinating on some level just how much snow there was if she didn't hate it so much.

Unsurprisingly, however, there's something-- or rather someone-- that Lettie hates even more than the ice. She squints when she notices a distinctly black heap lying in the snow a few feet away, steadily getting covered in it. Who else could it be but the pirate? The pirate who threw a motherfucking bomb at her.

Lettie tries to think of an appropriate insult to encapsulate her feelings when she hears the crackling of static. The faerie pans her gaze to the left to realize that some kind of old-school radio device was lying in the skid imprint Juno left in the snow. Wading through the snow, she reached down to pick it up and then held it to her ear.

"C-c-cap--" Marjorie's voice crinkles like a crumbled ball of aluminum foil through the static. "Cap?" Everything the skeleton has to say is broken up in pieces. She hears Abigail, then something incoherent, cannon, something, something. Ah hah! So that pirate took her advice after all. Took her advice and then tried to fucking off her. What an absolute charmer, really. What a shame. She had real potential to be a dreamboat with those buff arms of--

Lettie promptly smacks her forehead. No! She must be losing her marbles because of the cold. She will accept no other explanation at this point of time.

"Marjorie? Hello?" Lettie tries experimentally, struggling to wade through the snow to put a safe amount of distance between herself and Juno. Which means further than the pirate can throw, apparently, if she has any more bombs on that belt of hers. The faerie is super tempted to send one of her bomberflies over as revenge, but she's already wasted enough of her magic as it is. "Marjorie?"

"--lette! I was just--" Marjorie's voice crackles and then goes out. Seems like she can hear her, though! "Face-mask! And then--" Aw, geez. Any other day, the faerie would have been all about this conversation! After all of this, she could certainly use a good spa day. She's sure those poor skeletons could use a break from that grouchy captain of theirs, too. "--my bones?"

"Sorry. It's been totally dope, don't get me wrong! But I don't think I'm coming back." Lettie breaks the sad news, puffing her lower lip out. Let it be known that her apology is genuine, too. If she makes it out of this mess alive, the skeletons are the ones she'll miss the most. The skeletons and nothing else. Then the faerie shouts over the wind, specifically so that the mean pirate can hear her voice. "Because apparently your stupidly buff captain is dumb as hell!" For a moment she feels like she's gossiping with one of her besties on the phone, nearly forgetting she's in the middle of a crisis. She starts the long and annoying trek up the slope she slid down. "She tried to kill me, Marjorie!"

Marjorie's reply is too broken up to hear, but the scandalized gasp is unmistakable.

"I know, right!?" Lettie exhales, releasing her frustrations. A sense of calm rolls over her with that. (Or maybe it would have if she could feel anything other than these freezing temperatures.) "So stupid! Like, she knows I have the only key off of this world, right? Does she want to live in this bucket of ice for the rest of her life? Like, I seriously doubt there's any treasure to find here." She rolls her eyes. "Then again, she's got such a terrible temper. Maybe this is the universe's way of saying she needs to chill the fuck out?"

An ominously large shadow casts itself over the snow. Lettie's gaze pans up slowly to realize the giant snow demon is towering over her. Positively looming, mountainous, considering it's poised at the very top of that very steep slope. The thing's head practically disappears in the clouds. "Oh." The radio falls out of her hand as her heart drops down to the pit of her stomach. This is it. This is how she dies.

"--gail-- cannons!" Lettie vaguely registers the voice on the radio. "Fire!"

With a deafening explosion, a cannon ball launches across the icy battlefield and takes the snow abomination's head clean off its shoulders. Wow! Hah! The skeletons came through!

"Woo! Go skellies!" Lettie cheers with a enthusiastic hop for joy. Her celebration is short lived, however, as the rest of the giant's snow body crumbles and begins descending down the slope, picking up into what can only be described as an avalanche. "Oh sh--" The curse, along with the faerie, is mercilessly swept up in a tidal wave of snow and carried across the field. She's not sure how much time passes when she vaguely comes to. Covered in snow again (surprise, surprise!)... she's in a haze as she comes to terms with the fact that she's lying on top of something-- or rather someone-- distinctly human shaped. Oh. The pirate. Of course. "Yeesh. Thought you'd radiate more heat, you know... since you're so fucking... hotheaded."

With a belated squeak, the Lettie pushes off of Juno and backs away. "Wait a sec! You totally tried to kill me!" She glares. "Well, I hope you're happy! Now you're never getting off this world. Have fun freezing to death!" She would've run away. She really would've. But instead she's cursing her height as she trudges away from the pirate as fast as she can through waist-deep snow.
 
For exactly three seconds, Juno allows herself a moment to recuperate. In those seconds, she is dead to the world and at peace. Her tired pissed off body relaxes into the Juno-molded snow and she really wonders why she doesn't do this more often. (Well, actually, she doesn't really wonder that, because it's fucking obvious that if she ever took a moment longer than these three seconds to breathe she'd end up fucking dead or worse. In a world as harsh as hers, she's learned to trust no bitch. Hell, she doubts that she even trusted her family––the one she assumes that she had at some point growing up on the ground; whose faces are mostly blurs and the few memories she has are steeped in fucking evil. Ugh, yeah, let's fucking close that drawer.) If only the pirate could say she felt fucking refreshed after that pitiful power nap. Nope, if anything she arises more pissed off than before having caught that pastel shitlet spewing absolute slander about her! As if Juno hadn't actually saved her fucking life. (Never mind that her method also put the faerie in danger. She's fucking alive, isn't she?)

"Hey! You fucking shit––Marjorie, don't fucking listen to her," the pirate yells, knowing full well that her voice is not even carrying over to the faerie given the direction of the wind. Not that that stops Juno from bitching. (Is there a known force in the universe that is capable of such a feat?) "That piece of shit owes me her fucking life. Next time I'll let that stupid snow bitch eat her." Or whatever it planned on doing.

Speaking of that stupid snow bitch? Juno probably spots its head coming up over the slope before O-something does and rather than warn her, since she'll probably just accuse the pirate of trying to, she doesn't know, ruin her fucking vibes, she turns on her heel and begins shuffling through the snow as fast as her legs will allow. (The snow only hits her hip and even then it's a bitch to wade through.) She privately curses this stupid landscape for being so fucking inconvenient––seriously, why the fuck would the goddess allow a terrain to be this deadly?! (Then again, her own home planet is proof the goddess is a little bitch with a twisted fucking sense of humor. Fuck her, honestly.)

Anyway, somewhere Juno knows that she is not going to escape in time and when she looks backwards to face whatever awaits, she watches (somewhat impressed) as the giant's head gets blown off and then (super unimpressed) waits for the avalanche to race her way. There is just no fucking point in trying to run from that, she reasons.

It sweeps her away unceremoniously and she mostly just tries to not even think about the piles and piles of stupid ice that are eating up her bones. 'Stupid fucking ice––making me fucking cold. Piss off!' As she is being carried away she feels something distinctly warm(ish) run into her––maybe this is the goddess and answering her prayer? She holds onto it tightly, not wanting the random space heater (she assumes) to escape from her.

But, again, the goddess is a little bitch and it only takes her a second to realize it's the stupid fucking faerie and not some, she doesn't know, conveniently warm body pillow/space heater. "Gross!" Immediately she lets go of the bug. However despite her apparent disgust that doesn't stop her traitor brain from supplying scenarios of what could happen with the faerie on top of her. (Look, pal, Juno's just one fucking woman. How is she supposed to deny the comfort of another woman lying on top of her?'Piss off.')

But nothing like the false accusations to help get Juno's thoughts on the right track.

"Pfft." She staggers to get up, shivering furiously and immediately stuffing her hands under her armpits. Not that that helps since her clothes are officially soaked through from the fucking ice. 'Thanks a lot, bug.' "If I wanted you dead, I would have fucking killed you already." And that's true! There's literally nothing stopping her from doing so, especially right now, with the bug unable to make it very far in this snow. Juno follows her, reaping the benefit of the path the faerie creates. "And my aim is fucking impeccable so I would've nailed you right in your fucking head had exploding you been my goal. I also gave you ample fucking time to prepare. It's not my fault you forgot you're the flightless wonder and tried to fucking use those shitty wings of yours to get away. Us normal folk would run, by the way. Pro-tip." She huffs then slicks her hair back, revealing that white streak underneath. (Her hair actually listens to her this time and stays in place, given that it's fucking soaked.) "Next time you try to escape using your stupid cube, maybe you shouldn't fucking take me and my crew with you! Then you wouldn't have to be so concerned about getting killed."

"Besides," Juno continues, realizing it feels pretty good to get this off of her chest, "You fucking started it. Don't fucking act like you didn't try to fucking blind me with that ice ball, bugsy." Without thought, the pirate begins scratching at her scar. Then when she catches herself, her hand flies away from her face and she shoves it deep into her (soaked) pocket. 'Damn it's fucking cold.' She cranes her neck to look at the sky, then looks backwards from where they came––a blip in the distance, her ship just one cockroach sized speck. (Yeah, they should probably head back towards her ship, but bugsy is leading the way and Juno? She'd rather the faerie tire herself out and realize on her own she has a better chance of making it on a warm fucking ship than in ice town. It's better than wrestling with her to get back on the ship and playing the role of captor again––not that she won't do it if the bug continues to be stubborn. No way is Juno getting stuck here.) "Whenever you're ready, princess, we can call up my crew and they'll pick us up."

"Speaking of," Juno sticks out her hand and immediately regrets it, but she doesn't let it show. "Give me back my fucking radio before I use my stupidly buff arms to wrestle it from you." Is that the world's largest shit eating grin on Juno's face or is it the hypothermia getting to both of them? Who fucking knows! But Juno definitely caught on to the fact that the faerie noticed her muscles and is, perhaps, not immune to the effect they have. (The pirate doesn't consider herself vain, but her physique is something she prides herself in.)

As they continue going pointlessly nowhere, all that surrounds them is white. White lumps here, white lumps there––it's really not that fucking impressive and it's probably spite alone that keeps Juno from capitulating to the freezing fucking temperatures. At some point Juno just zones out entirely and continues trudging behind the faerie until she notices a neon bright snowflake drifting down in front of her. She snaps out of it, curious, and catches the bright speck. Its light goes out when it hits the palm of her hand and melts. 'Weird.' Then she realizes that more and more neon snowflakes are falling around them. Some hit the ground and their light dies. Others hit the ground and stay alit, creating a very distinct path forward. "What the fuck is your magic doing now, bugsy?"
 
"Are you kidding me!? I started it?" Lettie huffs out, practically wheezing with the incredulousness of it all. That and she's freaking winded from all of this traipsing around in the snow. Cold, cold, cold. It eats at her skin to the point where the ice even starts to take precedence over her thoughts. The faerie's boot slips and she slumps over, propping on her elbows on top of a particularly solid bank of snow to catch her breath. When she glimpses over her shoulder and notices the pirate is following her, she groans internally and continues to forge on ahead. Shit! Stupid fucking pirate. Who the fuck does she think she is, to throw these accusations at her and act like the victim here? "No, you started it! You're the one who tied me up and locked me in a cell. Don't get it twisted. You're the one who decided to make an enemy of me, Juju! Bet you're regretting that now, huh?" She would have laughed but the truth is that they're both in deep deep shit. Deep deep snow. And she doesn't want to waste the energy. It's so fucking cold. Her ears are bright red and her teeth start to chatter. Being picked up by the skeleton crew does sound nice. But her pride refuses to let her compromise with someone this infuriating. "Besides, you threw that zombie bod at me first! That was so gross!"

Lettie feels as if her anger is making her walk faster. However, in the (cold) cruel reality, she is still moving at a sloth's pace. Getting nowhere fast.

"And don't make me laugh. One measly snowball does not warrant a bomb, asshole! Children throw snowballs at each other all the time. What you did was fucking homicidal." Lettie continues her barrage, stubbornly ignoring the cold in favor of presenting her side of the argument. Her perfectly valid and correct side of the argument. "Like, please! You are in no position to lecture me on what's 'normal' after that."

Ugh, shit! Juno caught that part? Lettie doesn't have to look to know the pirate is wearing an insufferable smirk on her insufferable face. She can hear the satisfaction plainly in her voice and it pains her greatly to know she essentially just served it over to her on a silver platter. Stupid. Buff. Infuriating pirate. But it was nice. For that split second when she held her in those hard, supportive arms. The faerie felt protected for once in her life. And kind of warm. Wait, what!? The faerie brushed those traitorous thoughts from her mind. The woman hugged her and then possessed the audacity to call her gross afterwards. Which... rude!

Warmth. That was the alluring part, okay? Because it is so fucking cold. Lettie's brain is freezing and it's totally natural to just... experience a tragic lapse of judgement in that state. Maybe the illusion of protection was, too. The truth is that she'll never be safe in those arms. So she momentarily forgot the fact that it was not nice to be held by a mean pirate. No matter how buff she was. Buffness could not erase the fact that she was going to sell her off to an evil Duchess. It's an honest mistake, okay!?

Geez. Deflect, deflect! What is Juju asking for again? The radio. Oh, right. Lettie dropped it when she noticed the snow demon and thought she was staring death in the face.

"Stars. If I still had that radio I would be chucking it at your stupidly stupid face right now!" Lettie assures her vehemently. It's what she deserves. And stars know she wants to throw something... but she has officially sworn off of snowballs. At least for now. Because apparently one snowball to the face is the equivalent of a bomb in the pirate's mind and she is not equipped to run away fast enough if she decides to throw another one. Plus, she really doesn't want to touch more snow with her bare hands. She's cold enough as it is, thanks! "Obviously it got buried under that massive avalanche of snow." She gestures her arm out across the vast landscape, white as a blank canvas. "Why don't you piss off and look for it? Put those dumb muscles of yours to good use."

Lettie rolls her eyes, addressing the glowing path with little more than a glance as she keeps stubbornly marching in the opposite direction of the ship or the magic path.

"Seriously, Juju? That's not me." Duh! Lettie sighs, at a loss. Is the pirate really this hopeless or is she just pretending to annoy her? "Nah. It's probably some cryptic asshole who lures freezing woman to his house with the promise of warmth and shelter. And the second they let their guard down?" She grins mischievously and snaps her fingers. Well, tries and fails to snap them that is. Because they are numb as fuck. "He eats them, of course. Yeah, I'm not falling for that shit. Oldest trick in the fucking book. No thanks!" Except her teeth are chattering. Her skin is tinted blue and she is not going anywhere productive. As far as she can see, all that awaits her on the path she's taking is more fucking snow. But Lettie is nothing if not stubborn. If that kills her, then so be it."At this rate, I'm probably going to die wherever I go anyway." She glares accusingly over her shoulder. Okay, fine. The ship is probably her safest bet. But she needs the pirate to take fucking accountability before she relents! And maybe a little reassurance. "Unless you're willing to promise that you're not gonna try to kill me again?"
 
It does occur to Juno that she could easily make this situation suck less if she were to decide to create a few helpers (skeletons) to clear the path ahead. But that would suck the joy she's experiencing watching the faerie struggle and do all the hard work. (Pay-fucking-back for being so useless!) Plus, she doesn't know how long it's going to take for bugsy to realize that the smart decision is to return with the devil she knows, so if she wastes her necromantic reserves on boneheads when she might need it something better later? Then they're both fucking screwed. (Especially since the bug is fucking useless in a fight.)

"For fuck's sake you're still on that?" she rolls her eyes, or would roll her eyes if her face (eyes included) didn't feel so fucking frozen. "You're the one who fell from the sky and blacked out on a pirate's ship. What the fuck did you expect? And you were locked up for a total of five minutes! Don't go crying to your momma over that one, hun." Like, geez, five minutes isn't even that bad! Plus, it's not like the cells on Juno's ship are worse than actual fucking prison cells. No, those are much more fucking depressing and the guards are much worse than Juno was. Or maybe they're on par? Eh, she doesn't care to recall that particular stint. "Fuck, how did you even survive out in the real world thinking you could just land on pirate ships and not get captured? Just a recommendation, but you shouldn't turn your skull into a storage cavity for cotton candy and pipe dreams."

Honestly, Juno is trying to let all of these 'Jujus' roll off her shoulders, but she is reaching her fucking limit with that fucking nickname! There is the temptation to correct her, maybe shove her in the snow the next time she uses it, but somehow Juno thinks that might make the nickname situation worse. If only she could remember the faerie's name for more than three seconds to come up with a wicked nickname of her own. 'Damn.'

"Uhhh," the pirate scoffs, "children murder each other all the fucking time! They're maniacal little shits, swear to the fucking goddess." And Juno isn't really exaggerating. Well, maybe a little. She guesses that not every child is murderous or that children are even born with such intentions––even she can see how that would be pretty fucked up––but she does know that children do murder. "What I did was practical fucking revenge. Eye for an eye or some shit. Are you choosing to ignore that I didn't actually fucking hit you? That I saved your ass from getting eating by that frost giant? That I fucking warned you? Ugh, useless and fucking ungrateful."

Finding out O-something lost her fucking radio? Oh, if Juno's fingers weren't about to freeze the fuck off she would strangle the faerie. Choke her and watch the lights leave her eyes and when she puffs into ash, she'll kick her ashes across the universe! Instead, she settles for imagining such scenario and looking at the faerie in complete disbelief. "You fucking butterfinger! How the fuck are we supposed to give the airship our location?" she looks back again, trying to spot her ship, but with the snow picking up around them her visibility is only a few feet in each direction. "You're a terrible murderer, you know that? It'd be much fucking quicker to just stab me than take me to some planet to freeze to death." She's not convinced this isn't the faerie's plan. "The second my dumb muscles aren't frozen solid, I'll give you a lesson in humane murder," she grins. "But it's one of those once in lifetime lessons, so pay close attention, Ollie." (Eh, she could do better.)

The faerie does bring up a valid point in regard to the ominous path––not that Juno would ever admit that out loud and not that Juno had been considering it as an option. The pirate isn't going to trust random ass magic in a place so desolate it makes her (kind of) miss home. (At least back home she was only guaranteed losing her toes to night demons and shit, not the fucking weather.) Maybe she should be more concerned about the light path seeming to get more insistent that they follow it, but she figures as long as they continue to ignore it, then it can't hurt them. Not like it can force them to take it or anything. (Haha, right?)

Ugh, and now she wants the pirate to make a promise? Geez, this chick is stupid. "I've never once tried to murder you this entire fucking time!" Debatable since her first instinct was to throw the faerie overboard, but that aside she's been an absolute angel! She's only imagined the faerie in various states of murder to cope and that's completely fucking normal and she'd argue better than actually fucking murdering her. "Look, am I trying to kill you right now? With my big stupidly buff muscles?" She really couldn't help that. "You know I very well fucking could. I could have done it this morning when I found you in my own fucking bed, I could have done it when you trying to weasel your way off my ship with Clay––I even could have let you die last night with those nightmares. Fuck, give me five more minutes and I can fucking tell you every time I haven't murdered you! Of all the things that are probably rightfully trying to murder you, I'm the least of your concerns." Now, the second O-something loses possession of the cube? That's when Juno will make her murder fantasies a reality, but she's not going to say that for diplomatic reasons.
 
"Really? Leave the children out of this, Juju!" Lettie raises a brow and then puffs her cheeks stubbornly. "Children are not maniacal little shits unless they're raised that way. If a child has to resort to murder, it's more likely a matter of survival than anything else." She shakes her hands out and then draws them around her tightly. This, of course, does nothing. It's so cold. Cold, cold, cold. She feels lightheaded, like she might pass out, and reigns her focus back in by fixating stubbornly on the argument she needs to present. "Don't think I didn't notice the stupid smirk on your stupid face. You did that for shits and giggles! If you were really trying to help me, you could've warned me before you threw the bomb. Case and point? You are a homicidal asshole."

"Butterfinger...?" Lettie snorted, unable to help the laugh that rolls past her lips on that one. Oh, captain cupcake. She could be unintentionally funny sometimes. If she wasn't cussing her out, she tended to come up with the most ridiculous nicknames. ('It's kinda cute' some traitorous part of her brain whispers and she quickly regards that as another brain-freeze moment. Clearly she meant to think 'my laugh is so cute, isn't it?' or something along those lines! Then again, miss badass pirate here would probably consider 'cute' an insult of the highest caliber. Heh. So in a roundabout way, the thought isn't so traitorous after all! Yeesh. The cold is really getting to her, isn't it?) She throws a glance over her shoulder at the pirate, batting her eyelashes. (At this point, it might as well be the only flirtatious gesture she can still accomplish.) "Well maybe if you held onto your radio like you held onto me back there, we wouldn't be in this mess! Ever thought of that, sunshine?"

The pirate keeps going on and on and the sheer amount of nonsense she's spewing is positively nauseating!

"Ugh, please. Don't lump me in with the likes of you! And just a recommendation-- maybe you should stop threatening me if you're gonna be so damned touchy whenever I call you exactly what you are. A homicidal asshole!" Lettie shrugs and turns her attention forward again. Then another laugh ghosts out of her, rising in little puffs in the cold. "Ollie... that one's kinda cute, actually. I'll let it slide."

What she's not going to let slide, however? The fact that the pirate is trying to shirk responsibility for all of the crimes she has committed against a beautiful, innocent faerie who did not, in fact, deserve the struggles bestowed upon her. It's not like she sought out the pirate ship specifically! None of this is her fault.

"Wow! You deserve a gold star. It could say something like..." Lettie stretches her hands out to mime the label they could slap on this metaphorical gold star of hers. "'Wasn't as much of a homicidal asshole as I could've been!' That sound about right?"

Directing her attention forward again, the faerie blinks perplexedly when she notices that they're following the glowing path. (Except that she distinctly remembers moving in the opposite direction to avoid it.) The realization drops a chill down her spine, with a freezing bite that rivals even nature's cold. Lettie is a creature of magic. She knows down to her bones when something isn't right. There's some magic out there that's so fucked up it shouldn't be allowed to exist. She clamps a hand over her bracelet and grits her teeth. Shit. She stubbornly changes the direction that she's walking in, having trouble working her numb legs through the snow. Keeping her attention forward this time, she watches as the snowy landscape swirls and the glowing path stretches out before her again. (Yeah, fucked up magic. The kind of stuff that snaps free will away without mercy, erases the element of choice from the narrative. The kind of fucked up shit that ruined her fucked up life--) "Fuck!"

In that moment, Lettie considers the option of homicide herself, if only to end this creep's whole career before he could play them-- or anyone else, for that matter.

"Good news, Juju. Your homicidal asshollery might come in handy soon." Lettie informs her in a business-like manner, wading straight through the glowing snow now. "Hate to say this, but we've got a big magical target on our backs. But, hey! If we get out of this one alive, maybe I'll consider going with you and getting us the hell off this freezing lump of rock."

Eventually, Lettie makes out the sight of a house that stands out in a jarringly bright pop of color against the landscape of snow. Even in a normal forest this house would have stood out-- if only for the fact that it's made entirely of gingerbread and candy. (Stars, the sight and sweet smells wafting towards them reminds her that she's so hungry. But eating the candy houses never ends well in these stories.) It certainly looks sweet and harmless. Which means it's probably worse than anything she could imagine. "...Shit. This is even worse than I thought." The faerie looks back at the pirate, her expression stern. "Whatever you do, don't eat the house. Capiche?"
 
Not that Juno would ever go on the record to admit this––she barely is recognizing the acknowledgment now––but it does feel kind of nice to be absolved of her childhood crimes. (It had been a matter of survival, hadn't it?) Too bad the faerie's opinion means less the trash she steps on so any comfort, that she totally isn't feeling, is short lived. A shiver runs violently down her spine, enough that those thoughts are entirely swept from her mind and all that's left is the vague 'wah wah wah wah wah' of the faerie in front of her and the maliciously cold wind gnawing at her face. It sort of makes her miss when the faerie had been wrapped up in her arms earlier. It had been like holding onto a teeny tiny space heater. (There had been other nice things too, like how their bodies pressed together. Ugh, were it not for the layers of clothing, Juno would have been reminded of the impression of her figure from the day before when bugsy landed on top of her. 'Damn...' she idly thinks, not at all noticing how her mouth waters reflecting on the happenings of just yesterday.) If she weren't so convinced that O-something is trying to screw her over, she might have made a suggestion that they huddle closer together. For warmth, obviously. If other things happened afterwards? Well, Juno is just one woman and it really should not be her responsibility to bear the burden of her carnal appetites. 'What the fucking fuck?!' Okay, those thoughts went way further than the pirate intended and she's almost positive this is a result of her probably about to pass out and die in this goddess forsake ice land.

Naturally, this is also when the faerie mentions their earlier position and the pirate is infinitely grateful that her face cannot get any redder since being fucking frozen has taken care of that. She's also extremely concerned that the faerie might be a fucking mind reader for her to have mentioned that so soon after her own scandalous thoughts had passed. She decides to test this. 'You're a fucking imbecile, a dumb fuck, with hair that doesn't even make any fucking sense! Lilac is so not your color, bitch.' Nothing. Okay, but what if the faerie is good at pretending she isn't listening? 'Shit. Shit, shit, shit!'

"Pfft," she balks, trying to hide her nerves around the possible mindreader, "I really fucking would have had you not light fingered it off of me while I was fucking recovering from flying six hundred fucking feet in the air saving both our skins!" That also reminds her to never ever let herself sleep for as long as the stupid fucking faerie is around. The pattern has already been set that she'll get screwed over (i.e., stuffed in a closet or have her personal possessions stolen) if she ever closes her eyes around O-something for more than a fucking blink.

Ugh, there she goes again accusing Juno of being a homicidal asshole. Well, she figures it's better than that stupid captain cupcake nickname (or even the more recent sunshine one). It's more accurate, so that's a plus, and maybe it will make the faerie think twice before hurling icy balls of death at her. Still, Juno rolls her eyes in response, tempted to rifle her hand through her hair but decides against that because she's pretty fucking sure that would only result in her freezing her fucking fingers off. She'd mouth off, too, but the insult machine in her brain must be frozen solid as it's not coming up with anything to fire back. All it's thinking is, 'Do faeries start fires when they die or do they just fucking turn to ash?' Because if they are capable of lighting fires, she is totally willing to sacrifice O-something for that. (Okay, so many she is a little homicidal and she already knows she's an asshole... Huh.)

"Sheeit, so now it's okay to be a homicidal asshole? Well, thanks for the fucking permission, your highness." Again, she rolls her eyes, surprised she could even think of something to say or even get words out with how furiously her teeth are chattering. While part of Juno wants to complain that O-something is exaggerating about the magical target thing, the glowing path won't stop trying to lead them and when they come up on that candy shack on the horizon? It may look cute as shit, but the death signature clinging to that place immediately sets off all the alarm bells in Juno's head. She can feel all the skeletons lurking in those candy closets and they aren't fucking happy. She'd channel her fear and suspicion into something productive, but then the faerie definitely insults her by calling her 'capiche.' "What the fuck did you just call me?!" she shouts, naturally assuming it's an insult of the highest degree in Faerie World and not, you know, a bastardized way of asking someone if they understand/comprehend.

"Language!" a voice bellows from inside the candy shack. The chocolate door swings open and standing in the entrance is... a talking candy? It's about the size of a dinner table, circular, and is covered in red and white pinwheel stripes. It also has a distinct face as well as arms and legs. (It's a large anthropomorphic peppermint, but Juno doesn't know what a peppermint is.) The pirate is officially convinced she died and ended up in her own personal hell. (And given that bugsy is here with her, the theory sorta checks out.)

Before either can respond, the warm smells––cinnamon, clove, ginger––wrap around their torsos, literally, binding their arms, and pull them inside the Candy Shack of Doom. 'Fuck and what the fuck?'

"Oh, you poor dearies must be so cold! You're practically blue––that just won't do," the peppermint tuts as they are set down at the chocolate table. "Let me take care of you while we wait for Mammy." The talking candy snaps her fingers and their soaked coats are removed. She snaps again and a warm wind washes over them, gently kissing their cold extremities, and sending a zing of warmth through their bodies. (Juno can't deny she isn't grateful for that, even if skeptical of this entire situation that is probably the disaster magnet's fault.) "You know, it really is a health hazard to wear that which belongs to the dead. And you," she looks at O-something with the same discontent, "Stealing clothes from your friends is naughty, naughty! Mammy will not like that. No, no. You must be good and sweet."

Ordinarily, Juno would have handled this with some good ol' fashion homicidal assholery but as it stands, she's magically bound to the chair and actively struggling. Her efforts double when a slice of diarrhea is presented to them. (It's Shepard's pie though in Juno's defense it does look messy. Still, it doesn't smell nearly foul enough to be excrement.) Then the tendrils of aromatic steam that tied them into place begin to feed the two. Naturally, Juno resists because no one fucking offers free food without later demanding a hefty price––plus, she's still not convinced this isn't a hot pile of seasoned crap.

"Oh, quit resisting! You are going to toughen the meat," the peppermint chides, smacking the pirate upside her head. "Don't make me fetch the shovel, girl. Now, eat! I am going to inform Mammy that our guests are here and when I come back, your plates better be empty and licked clean," she sings, giving a little spirit fingers goodbye.

The spoon does eventually manage to make it past Juno's lips but the pirate stubbornly refuses to swallow. Instead, she spits the food out at O-something. "This is your fucking fault, you fucking disaster magnetic––" the spoon goes in again and once more she spits it out at the faerie, "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! Now we're being force fed dog shit!" (The flavor is completely overwhelming to the pirate, but even she knows it's probably not dog shit.) "We're in fucking hell and this is you––" she spits again, "re fault!"
 
"Oh, please. It doesn't count as stealing if she lent it to me! And we are not friends." Lettie refutes, knowing that's probably not the battle she ought to pick right now. She's being restrained to a chair and-- geez, is no one going to be considerate of the fact that she's got a broken wing here? Now that the warmth has instilled some feeling back into her, she's finding that the pain is sinking in along with it. It hurt when she tried to fly. Hurt when she rolled down that slope and yes, it also hurt when she got whisked off like a rag doll by that avalanche. Now the reminder is sinking into her back with the subtly of a knife. She sucks in a sharp breath through her teeth as the chair grates against her wing in all the wrong ways. "Fuck good and sweet!" Hm. This magic was a force to be reckoned with. Like, it absorbed information about them just by collecting their coats.

Lettie presses her own lips closed against the attempts to spoon feed them, tilting her head away with disgust. Ugh! The sacrifices one must make to survive. It keeps falling off the spoon, splattering all over her poor clothes, but there is no way she is swallowing the food. For all she knows, ingesting it will condemn her soul into service there for eternity. Maybe it'd turn her into a piece of sentient candy. Or maybe it was just poisoned and she'd subsequently get chopped up and baked into another fucking pie... a pie that would be fed to the next sucker who showed up in this twisted candy hell. Knowing her luck, they'd probably bake her into the same pie as that annoying pirate, too. Their ghosts would be roommates in this place forever. Oh stars, no! Anything but that.

Speaking of the annoying pirate-- she's suddenly resorted to spitting her food at her like a toddler! "Gross!" Lettie's insides squirm uncomfortably. This is hell. Her wing fucking hurts, the pie is starting to smell nauseating, her clothes are getting stained enough as it is without adding the pirate's saliva into the mix. She'd totally vom from the overstimulation if her stomach wasn't already empty. "Stop that! Do you think complaining about it is going to--" Bleh. A little makes it into her mouth and it's her turn to spit it out. "Do anything? Fucking asshole! I warned you coming in."

Discreetly, Lettie focuses on sending her frustrations down her arm and into the hand she's balling into a fist. Magic swells in the palm of her hand and, when she opens it up, a few deadly, microscopic butterflies flutter out. Undetectable, she instructs them to land all over the stupid pie. One... two... She closes her fist again and the phantom butterflies she'd created, along with the pie, explodes. The plate shatters and a hole is blown right in the center of the chocolate table as well. Hehe, oops! Sorry not sorry. The spoons freeze in midair, as if they hadn't been designed to react to this turn of events and couldn't compute it. Malfunctioning just like some kind of outdated computer program.

"Oh wow, would you look at that? Our plates are clean!" Lettie taunts with a sing-song 'now what are you gonna do about it' tone. The aromas at least seemed unable to argue with them. Which means she possibly bought them a little time before that peppermint nightmare returns with... Mammy. Ugh. This is bad. This is so fucking bad. She struggles against the restraints but they don't let up. It sends stars across her vision and she's on the verge of passing out which... no, no, no. She glares at the spoons hovering in front of them. "Looks like you two can fuck off now." And surprisingly enough? The spoons decide to give up at her prompting and clatter to the table. Whew. That's one problem solved. One of about a thousand.

Lettie would totally try and see if she could phase herself out of these restraints if not for the fact that she's so damned drained. She's already done it quite a few times today and after all that wading around in the snow, along with the added pressure against her wing making every breath pure agony... she doesn't possess the confidence to do it again without passing the fuck out. She's still weak from her fall. There's no guarantee that she's going to make it out either. Disaster magnet is right. Alright. Well if she can't magic her way out of this, might as well use her head. Closing her eyes, she remembers her mother's voice. Sometimes magic is as easy as solving a riddle or figuring out the punchline of a joke. (Or it'll be frustratingly simple. Or crafted from puns.) Especially classic storybook magic like this.

Hm. Well, aromas can be inhaled, right? (As lame as it sounds, that's the only thing she can think of. It's possible to mask them by lighting a scented candle or something, but unfortunately that's not an option here.) Experimentally, Lettie tips her chin downward and inhales deeply through her nose, taking the smells in. The effect it has on her is dizzying, a pinwheel of color spins momentarily in front of her eyes, but... eventually the restraints vanish as if into thin air and she falls in an ungraceful heap onto the floor. "Oof!" Picking herself up, she rolls her wrists and adjusts her poor abused wings with a cringe.

"...I don't know about you, Juju--" Lettie pinches the bridge of her nose, coping with the headache the smells induced. She speaks the rest through her teeth, trying to keep her volume low enough that the freaking peppermint can't overhear them. "But I don't want to meet whoever the hell Mammy is. So? What are your homicidal instincts telling you?" It seems like they won't have very long to come up with a plan, however. She can already hear the 'tap tap' of footsteps headed their way!
 
Immature as the pirate's tactic is, she isn't actually aiming to escape. Not at the moment. Sure, she is struggling fiercely against her bonds and aggravating the two (2) bite wounds she's received in the past 24 hours (not to mention the bruise on her back from that fall), but ultimately she is just trying to work out her frustrations. The faerie is an easy target and making her more miserable might help Juno's morale. If her morale is boosted then perhaps she will have the energy to figure a way out of this predicament! (Admittedly, she is a bit hangry, too, having been tossed into this clusterfuck before even getting to eat her morning gruel. Not that she particularly derives joy from eating flavorless sludge but she recognizes it as necessary if she wants to kick ass and being that the faerie has attracted several fucks who deserve ass kickings? She can't really afford to skip meals. It's sort of bitter that she has to say no to this free gruel, but, as she has already pointed out, no one hands out food for funsies. Pfft, that shit never works out.) "Your warning sucked! You didn't tell me haunted fucking circles," the peppermint, "were going to fucking use the power of sugar, spice, and everything nice to fucking restrain me!" Yes, all the while Juno continues to make a mess.

While bugsy continues to be useless, she finally decides it's time to stop fucking around. Decidedly, she doesn't want to meet this Mammy bitch or find out anything more about this weird cookie-house. She redoubles her efforts on try to break free from the aromatics, using one of the two known strategies in the Juno Strategic Guide to Getting Out of Trouble (muscles or bone). Muscles are not working. No matter how hard she twists or tries burst from this smelly chain, she can't. Her chair is scraping backwards, starting to tilt, and before she even recognizes what has happened there's a loud fucking boom (Juno momentarily thinks she accidentally set off one of her remaining bombs and she's about to be sent to double hell). She loses balances, the chair topples over, along with the pirate, and breaks. That effectively knocks the wind from her chest and she's left gasping for air, evidently and inadvertently inhaling her aromatic bonds. It makes her want to barf and she nearly does, but out of sheer stubbornness, she holds down last night's dinner. She tries to grasp the table, but only claws the air and that's when she notices that the table is broken and bits of that diahrrea pie are exploded everywhere. 'Huh. Weird.' The last person Juno is going to credit is the faerie, since she didn't see how it all went down. If anything, she assumes the pie was a bomb itself and had they eaten it, they would have ended up exploded as well.

Juno sucks in a breath, again, trying to hold down the little scraps of food that are still in her system, as she gets up, sticking her arms out for balance. "I'm not liking this whole being homicidal when it's fucking convenient for you," she snipes, clenching her jaw while her head spins, "so let's get one thing fucking straight, punk, I'm homicidal because I want to be." Okay, definitely not her best line and definitely not what she should be focusing on as the tapping gets closer. 'Ah, fuck.' She pulls it together and temporarily suspends her vendetta against the disaster magnet. She deeply doesn't want to know anything about this Mammy bitch's fucked up shtick.

Now that the pie is exploded everywhere and she's not focusing on not swallowing that poison, she recognizes the distinct signature of death splattering the walls. (Blood, bone, flesh, and spirit. Their tendrils are faint, like wisps and could be mistaken for spiderwebs, but Juno's not fucking five anymore. She's know necromantic fuel when she sees it.) Alright, she does not like that implication but it works in her favor with the taps fast approaching—though suddenly, they become stomps so forceful the house is shaking and cookie dust is dusting over them. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," she mumbles, glancing over at the faerie, before focusing her attention back on those threads. "Bugsy, get behind me." She outstretches her arms and pulls on the energy––she doesn't have the luxury of deciding what to create, but given the hulking mass now standing in the hallway? She decides it's appropriate to throw caution to the wind and throw something big at this fucker (who she assumes is Mammy).

"There are the naughty girls!" the evil circle says, stepping out from behind the mass and pulling it into the room.

"Tsk, tsk, playing with your food!" the new voice starts, sounding about as pleasing as nails on a chalkboard. She steps into the light and Juno really wishes she could unsee this monster because, for whatever reason, this bitch is a fucking anthropomorphic mammoth dressed in granny clothes. Well, al-fucking-right then. Juno still doesn’t want to find out more about this creep and in a forceful motion, she crosses her arms downwards, forcing the death matter to bend to her will. From the splatters of candy shack victim pie, sharp tendons reinforced with bone spurt outwards and reach for the two creeps, criss crossing and slashing into the mammoth and circle, dicing them up.

The circle falls apart, blood leaking from its pinstripes, but the mammoth? She just laughs, The noise thunders through the candy shack and its force is enough to knock Juno backwards. "Ah, so you want a taste of Mammy? Had you simply asked, I would have fed you my flesh, my children. What else am I here for if not to nurture? But since you did not ask it is time for some discipline."
 
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For the first time ever Lettie does precisely what Juno says without complaint and ducks behind her. (See, she's not difficult on purpose! And if she's being offered legitimate protection for a change, then the faerie is more than happy to take whatever she can get.) Especially since their adversaries seem to be approaching faster than they could discuss (let along agree upon) an appropriate course of action to escape this hell they've found themselves in. If there's anything they're in firm agreement on, it's that they do not want to meet Mammy. That they want no part in whatever games they're being forced to play. So sure! She gets behind the idea and the pirate consecutively. And she watches on with rapt attention because, clearly, she needs to study her captor's magic. Her fighting style. And if observing pirate's stupid buff arms just so happens to be a part of that, then so be it. Can't blame Lettie, 'cause there's literally nothing that she can do about that! It's nothing more than strategy. A matter of survival. Nothing more, nothing less. And just because they're working together now does not mean they're gonna be besties. The intel will be crucial for later, when Juno inevitably acts on her homicidal tendencies just because she 'wants' to act homicidal again or whatever.

Lettie will never admit this aloud-- mostly because she had given the pirate enough satisfaction by acknowledging the existence of her stupid buff arms-- but she doesn't disappoint when the throws her toned arms down and cuts that sentient peppermint to bloody shreds. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for that nightmare Mammy, though, whose laugh pushes Juno back into Lettie, sending her tumbling to the ground like a domino.

"Ugh! Seriously?" Lettie is so sick and tired of falling at this point. When had the world decided to make her its punching bag, anyway? (Probably shouldn't try to dignify that question with an answer, because this shitshow she called her life began a long, long time ago.) "Ew, don't even flatter yourself! As if I'd want a creep like you anywhere close to my lips." She shudders and sticks her tongue out to gesticulate the pure disgust Mammy inspires in her. "I'd sooner kiss captain sunshine here than--" Oh. Okay. That's a choice, a choice she clearly did not think through, and shit! (It's because she's thinking about lips, okay? A perfectly natural connection to make if one didn't consider the implications and--) Shit, shit, shit! Now she's got no choice but to commit, "--than get a taste of your gamey flesh! Gross!"

Before Lettie can contemplate what a mess her life is and overanalyze every mistake she's ever made in alphabetical order, Mammy mentions discipline and she knows she's got to get her head back in the fucking game. The remains of the peppermint rise and take on individual lives of their own. Shard-shaped monsters covered in blood, opening mouthes filled with sharp teeth, screeching out like banshees with existential horror as they're made sentient. The chocolate table also turns over on its side with a noisy 'thump'. The exploded hole she'd created in the center functions as its mouth, which opens and closes and screams kind of like a severely confused middle-aged man.

Lettie scrambles up to her feet and presses close behind the Juno. Might as well wait this out and see if her homicidal pirate here has a solution. It's not that she can't fight, all right? She just doesn't want to burn herself out unless she absolutely has to!

"Naughty, naughty. It seems that neither of you children were raised right!" Mammy tsks. She inhales deeply, then. Hm. That's a pattern if the faerie's ever seen one. Too bad she doesn't know what to do with that information yet. "Hm, no wonder. I smell mommy issues on the both of you! Do not worry, my children. My punishments are fair-- it's for your own good! Mammy will take good care of you if you just behave!"

"This bitch." Lettie mutters under her breath. Geez, how fucking violating! This place is siphoning personal information from them. Same as that peppermint was able to sniff out the stories behind their jackets. But now it's starting to get too personal and it needs to stop before she gets angry. "Fuck her up, Juju! I know you can do it. I totally believe in the homicidal asshole in you!"
 
As is becoming her fucking mantra, Juno just thinks, 'What the fuck,' when the talking mammoth is left unaffected by her attack. She can see that the reinforced tendons didn't miss––they just seem to have phased through the freakshow. (Yet, they totally obliterated the talking circle.) As if that weren't enough to keep the pirate's mind busy, then the faerie has to put the image of them kissing inside her head for some fucking reason. That causes the pirate to slip as she tries to get up from the floor, her brain pretty much short-circuiting and there's a chance it won't come back online. (Not that Juno is attracted to the faerie, mind you. Pfft, that's a stupid fucking thought! Juno just happens to know that kissing is nice and fun and can lead to other lip touching activities so sue her for getting a little lost in her fucking thoughts!) Wow, she fucking wishes she had something to drink, because someone fucking raised the temperature of the room. That can be the only explanation for her parched throat. Definitely not her totally appropriate thoughts that do not involve bugsy. As she recovers, she tries to hold onto the fact that bugsy was actually insulting her with her little kiss comment than interrogate why the thought of kissing her is so pleasing. "You would be fucking lucky to kiss these lips, bug," she mumbles, finally able to get her legs to work as she stands up, sniffling up the trace of blood leaking from her nose. 'Shit, really? Already?' one voice in her head asks. Another responds, 'Well, that's what you fucking get for going big before knowing exactly what you're dealing with, dumbass.'

Berating herself won't help, however. Neither will antagonizing the bug. She has to focus her attention back on Mammy––looking for any show of weakness, because no one is fucking invincible. Even goddesses can fall as the old stories indicate. Nothing can escape decay. Of course, when she mentions mommy issues the homicidal asshole's attention is stolen and her fists clench. "You ought to shut the fuck up if you know what's fucking good for you, bitch," she grits. Just what gives this bitch the right to call out her fucking issues?! (Juno completely misses how they both were implicated in the statement.) Like, first of all Juno doesn't have a fucking mommy so how can she fucking have mommy issues?! (Okay, well, obviously Juno has a mother but the memories of that woman are shrouded and the story she knows leaves her feeling kicked in the stomach. Then thinking of the figure who did raise her turns her blood to bile. This all obviously doesn't count as mommy issues because Juno is obviously so fucking over it she could fucking laugh!) "I swear to the goddess, if you don't shut your fucking mouth," she heaves, her vision spotting.

"Language, missy!" the mammoth booms, "You both have such dirty, dirty mouths. Naughty girls don't get dessert." She shakes her head and taps her foot. This seems to signal to the distraught shards and chocolate table to attack. "Show these nasty girls what happens when they do not obey Mammy's rules."

Yeah, this is so many kinds of fucked up that Juno doesn't even want to explore how Mammy would ever be able to cure the mommy issues (that she definitely doesn't have). "Yeah, yeah––just don't get in my way, Ophelia," she responds, punctuating it with her signature eye roll.

Her magic can obviously touch the sentient objects, but given that the evil circle turned into bloodthirsty shards, she knows she'll have to take more drastic measures to take out these fucks. She smirks. This is one of the first lessons a kid learns about malevolent spirits. 'Fire,' she thinks, recalling that souls can be cleansed in fire to prevent or cure rot. In this case, flames should pull these little freaks into the inferno, where all retired souls must go. (Of course, Juno's never applied this logic to fucking feral candy but if they're sentient then they must have souls, right?)

Rather than risk burning up more of her magic, she unclips her whip and slides her hand over the boneshards that make up the length, straighten it out and also bathing it in her blood. She snaps the whip once to drive the candies back then uses this buffer to send the end of the of whip into the fireplace. When the cracker touches the flame, the necromancer's blood ignites and bright red fire runs down the length of the whip. With the whip lit, she quickly jerks her arm outwards towards a group of demonic shards. They scream when the lash hits them, high pitched and pained, but a moment later they go up in flames and are reduced to piles of ash. The necromancer breathes a sigh of relief and hits the remaining pawns, sending their broken souls to the inferno.

"What are you doing?!" Mammy screams, stomping her foot and causing the entire house to shake. Cracks sprout along the walls and ceiling, but Mammy doesn't seem concerned about the damage to her edible cottage. "Naughty children get punished! Quit fighting or it will only be worse."

"Well, bitch, you keep saying that and my ass has yet to be punished! Are you even trying?" Juno snaps the whip again and again towards the mammoth, but all she manages to do is singe her wool coat––the thing doesn't even bleed. In fact, the whip still seems to go through her––that means... "Ophelia," Juno says, proud she totally remembered the faerie's name, "Whatever is fucking holding this place together, it's not the talking fuzzy elephant. She's just a fucking projection. Not real. Something else is fucking controlling her." Juno's clearly desperate if she's turning to the useless faerie for ideas. Yeah, she might not have asked, but her question is fucking implied! Figure it the fuck out! And quickly, because the motherfucker is taking another deep breath!
 
Lettie's eyes sparkle as she watches the pirate fight from behind, wielding her flaming whip and taking out their adversaries with a few well-timed strikes. (Um. No, wait! It's just the reflection of the flames dancing in her eyes that gives them that spark! It's not like she's impressed or anything. Pfft, lighting a few sentient candy fuckers on fire is nothing.) Well, taking out all but Mammy who continues to persist in spite of everything they (ahem, Juno technically) has had to throw at her thus far. The abomination starts to stomp and the shaking nearly causes her to fall again. Not this time, bitch! Lettie grounds her heels into the floor to keep herself steady. Then her attention flickers to the walls and then to the ceiling as cookie dust sprinkles down and lands on her shoulder. Twisting her lips, she dusts it off with her fingertips. Ugh. Along with her, her poor outfit has been through the wringer today. (Is it too much to ask that the cube drops them in a fancy laundromat world next? Because that'd be pretty dope! Do me a solid, cube. Please? This is the only outfit she has, after all, and she doesn't assume anything in that tall pirate's closet will fit her. Or a giant shopping mall world! Or better yet, a world full of free clothes.) The mean pirate shatters her fashion fantasies when she decides to consult with her on what to do.

She crosses her arms and shoots Juno an unimpressed glance when she uses the wrong name yet again. The faerie's grown tired of wasting her breath to correct her at this point. If this is the pirate's game, it's pretty clear she's not going to quit playing it anytime soon. All she's got to do is show that it doesn't faze her anymore! Besides, they clearly have more important things to be worrying about right now. Tilting her head, she squints as she gets another glimpse of Mammy. "A projection." Lettie sighs and deftly traces the glyph for her purse. Reaching inside the circle, she procures her hand mirror and waves it. "Okay, fine. I'll try and see if I can find the source. You keep Mammy busy so I can concentrate! Ca--" She freezes, remembering how the pirate chewed her out for using 'capiche' earlier. Dummy. It's just not worth it to explain the actual implications right now. "Got it?"

That said, Lettie settles herself down on the floor and traces the symbol to activate her looking glass magic. The glass morphs into an orb and she presses her fingertips to it. Clearing her mind, she begins filtering all of her observations thus far into the glass to see if it can gauge what they ought to be looking for here.

Luckily for them, Mammy's next big inhale also results in her breathing in a fuckton of smoke from the flames along with their scents. She wheezes and coughs and stomps her foot again in frustration. "Mammy does not abandon her children like some mothers do." The cracks in the house are getting larger and larger. Towards the back, a portion of the ceiling breaks off and smashes to the ground. "But Mammy will ground you insolent children for life for setting her beautiful home on fire!" The projection trunk stretches out towards Juno, poised to take another deep breath.

The glamour in Lettie's eyes burns out as she continues to expend her magic in her desperate search. Beautiful. ('There. That's better.' She can hear the pleased smile in mother's voice as she sets her hands down on her shoulders. She can see them standing in front of the fancy vanity in the bedroom. It smells like rose perfume, so much so that it overwhelms her. Roses. Fuck. Even more foreshadowing, huh. 'A glamour fixes those eyes of yours right up, you see? I think blue suits you best, my little Lettie. Now they look just like mine. Beautiful.') Mammy is seeing all of this, too. The faerie can feel the mammoth inhaling these childhood memories, giving the monstrosity the information it needs to hit her where it hurts. Does it plan to wear them down emotionally and physically and feast on them when they've run out of fight? Ugh! Looking glass magic is tricky enough without all these fucking distractions!

At this rate, she and Juno are going to fall right into Mammy's trap. And Lettie's so fucking sick and tired of falling.

"Fuck! This isn't working." Lettie exclaims, throwing her hands down. The mirror falls flat again and she snaps her white eyes open. Deftly, she deposits her mirror back into her bag and instead reaches for her bottle of perfume, clutching it tightly in her fist. The memory, annoying as it is, gives her an idea. And some sacrifices are necessary, she guesses. She drops her voice to a whisper for only the pirate to hear. "We don't need to play this game. It's totally rigged." And if Mammy's going to play dirty by getting personal, they might as well play dirty too! "We just need to kill the damn thing. Juno, use your stupid muscles and punch out one of the windows! We'll need a swift exit pretty soon here. Don't question me-- just do it!" Should be easy enough, considering the cracks in the wall.

And if Juno needs a good reason as to why she needs to do this (which the faerie suspects she will if she's going to listen to a single thing she says) Lettie smirks mischievously and waves the bomb she swiped from the pirate's belt earlier. "You'll like this, Mammy. It's jasmine, lily of the valley-- with hints of amber and sandalwood. And maybe it'll be enough to get your nose the fuck out of our business, you bitch!" Without waiting a second longer, she tosses both the bomb and the bottle of perfume together towards the heart of the candy house.
 
Great, so while the faerie plays with her fucking magic mirror, Juno gets to entertain the talking prehistoric elephant! The prehistoric fucking elephant who seems to know way too much about the pirate for her own comfort. While she hates having to go along with someone else's plan, she did sort of ask and it's not like she has any other ideas. If the faerie can get them out of this shitstorm, without anymore of her private information being siphoned out of her, she'll maybe consider walking back on her prior assessment that she's fucking useless. "Be fucking quick, bugsy."

She turns her attention back to the stupid fucking inhaler but isn't able to act before Mammy is spilling more of her private information, like she's a fucking dam of Juno facts on the verge of breaking! "Shut your fucking mouth," she snaps, not at all noticing that the house is starting to crumble thanks to the mammoth's own frustrations. No, her vision is laser focused on the bitch in front of her (she's forgotten that Ophelia is behind her). “Don’t say another fucking word.” Juno cracks the whip once more, striking Mammy’s nose. Then again. And again and again, adding more burnt stripes to her trunk.

The monster starts laughing with each lash––pissing Juno off even more, enough that she turns her whip into a flaming sword and goes in for quicker strikes. Mammy just rolls her eyes and knocks the weapon from the pirate's hand. "Don't you want to feel loved and wanted for once? Mammy can give you that, child," she coos, smacking Juno with her trunk and sending her flying into a wall. (She's surprised she didn't fly through it given that it's made out of fucking cookie.) The pirate groans, but refuses to stay down. She pushes herself off the floor and, forgetting that the bitch is a projection, starts swinging at her, missing every time. Again, she's laughing, "Just let someone take care of you. I can tell you want that, Juno."

‘Fuck.’

The utterance of her own name drags the pirate somewhere she doesn't want to be. (All she can see in front of her is that shack, made up of scrap metal and tarp. There's a hand on her back pushing her forward and her small awkward body stumbles and trips. She lands in a heap, like a pile of fucking trash waiting to be taken elsewhere.) The pirate rubs her eyes, gritting her teeth as she shoves that memory away from Mammy’s reach. "Stay out! Get out!" (Goddess, there's a reason she doesn't remember much of her childhood so why doesn't this fucking talking elephant take the hint?) Frustrated and not waiting at all to recover, she continues her useless onslaught.

"Let me know when you're tired, dearie, and Mammy can put you down for a nap," she yawns while Juno exhausts herself. (Somewhere the pirate knows this isn't working, but she refuses to feel powerless and maybe just doing something helps her not feel so fucking small. Like a fucking abandoned kid.) Eventually, she does have to stop to catch her breath and she backs away towards the bug for her pause. That's about when bugsy tells her to bust through a wall. That, she knows she can do––surprisingly, she doesn't even question the faerie. Mostly because she doesn't care whether Ophelia has a strategy or not. At this point, Juno would even take freezing to death to being cracked open like a walnut.

Though when she sees the faerie waving a bomb that looks suspiciously familiar… That sends her over the fucking edge and it's like an instant kick of energy to get her back up and running. (Reminder number 87 for her to never close her eyes around Ophelia.) "Why, you little fucking shit!" She would continue, but it does occur to her that maybe she should channel this energy into wall smashing rather than bitching if she doesn’t want to explode. She lets out a frustrated noise and decidedly lets this go (for now). Then Juno dashes towards the nearest window, grabbing her whip on the way, and shoulders through the sugary window. She knows they don't have much time before that bomb goes off and with the snow being as deep as it is, she's not going to get out of the blast zone. 'Fine.' Obviously wanting to make sure her ticket off this frozen wasteland is safe, she reaches backwards for Ophelia, captures her in her arms, and dives into the snow to burrow as deep as she can.

She covers the faerie with her body and shakes some teeth from her pocket, manipulating the bones into a cocoon like shield around them. The bomb goes off not even a second later, shaking the earth beneath them and throwing debris all over the place. Even after the initial boom, small explosions flare up as flames eat the candy horror show. The spirits that had been trapped, all squeal as they are released from their curse.

When all is quiet, she forces the bone defense to explode outwards, effectively pushing the surrounding snow and debris away from them. She releases the faerie and flips over onto her back, ignoring that her nose is bleeding, shivers, and just sighs. Then by way of thanks she says, "You blew up our fucking jackets." She makes peace with this fact, sits up, and stares at the burning gingerbread disaster. That is impressive, but she won't say anything about it. It's just an explosion. Pfft. She’s still half-useless. (Hey, it’s an improvement!) At least the fire they made (yes, Juno is absolutely taking some credit) can keep them warm. “And you stole one of my fucking bombs,” she checks her belt again just to make sure her remaining one is still there and clutches it. “You also fucking fucked with my jacket!”

Her list of complaints could go on, but she stops. Too tired. Too fucking hungry. Vaguely, she remembers Ophelia telling her not to eat the house but it had smelled pretty edible and, also, weird? Or like warmth? She can’t decide. She does decide, however, to get up and walk into to the wreckage, picking up one of the burnt ginger bread bits and gives it a whiff. It smells fucking disgusting––that weird warmth smell is now masked with gunpowder, smoke, and something that’s just flat out foul. Her lip curls and she tosses the piece to the side. (Again, vaguely she remembers the bug threw something with the bomb, but she cannot recall what the potion had been.) "This place smells like ass now," she complains, kicking up the melting snow. 'At least ice world is melting.' Not fast enough, obviously, but she does derive some pleasure from watching this white shit melt. "Now we’re gonna fucking starve.”
 
Ouch! At first, Lettie's not sure if she blacked out because she flat out just died in the explosion she caused... but the source of her temporary spell of unconsciousness is made apparent when she comes to and puts the pieces together that the pirate must've yanked her backwards from the house, effectively pinning her (and her broken wings) down in the ice outside. This pain is like taking two swords through the back, it takes all of the pride she has stored up in her tiny body not to cry out with it. It's all pretty overwhelming. Especially when she blinks her eyes open to discover the sight of the pirate hunched over her protectively, those strong arms positioned firmly at either side of her-- well, let's just say she's blushing-- flushed-- because it's so damned cold. That's obviously all it is! Her clothes are once again getting soaked through in the snow and it's fucking freezing! (Duh! This whole thing can be pinned on the ice and not the gay mess she knows she is at heart. Just going to conveniently ignore the fact that her face is distinctively warm instead of cold. And by extension also ignore the warmth pooling in her belly and in, ahem, other places.) Before the faerie can self-destruct, Juno rolls off of her and she deflates with a shaky little sigh. (Of relief. Of course of relief.)

"Blew up that bitch Mammy, too. Which... you're welcome, by the way." Lettie mumbles, rising slowly like a zombie from the dead to sit up. While Juno busies herself with approaching the burning house for whatever reason, the faerie summons her bag to grab her mirror. Using it to look into her eyes, she cringes as she confirms for herself that yes, the glamour faded and now they're as white as the snow all around them. Concentrating all the energy she has left, she makes a valiant attempt give them the lively green glamour she'd been using before. They successfully change for about a second before flickering and fizzling back to their natural white. Ugh. Lame. (Well, it's not as if they're anything the pirate hasn't already seen before. Except she can't get that knee-jerk reaction she'd had the night before out of her mind. Staring at her as if she were a ghost or something. But no, no, no. For the record-- she does not care what Juju of all people thinks of her true appearance. Of course not! That'd be utterly ridiculous.) Stupid snow. Everywhere she looks, it reminds her of the ghastly shade. She's overcome with the overwhelming impulse to toss her mirror (and her reflection by association) into the flaming pile ahead and quickly stuffs it back into her purse before she can surrender to it. This is the only one you have, dummy. Don't break it.

Ravan was always telling her that shattering mirrors out of frustration must be part of the reason why she has such rotten luck. Normally she calls the vampire-wannabe a superstitious bitch because of it. Now, though? She's starting to wonder if he was actually onto something with his nonsense.

"Says the person who ransacked coats off corpses! I get it's convenient to nab free clothes when you see them, but they smelt like burnt zombie. Gross." Lettie decides to put that energy towards verbal sparring with the pirate instead. She considers fucking with Juno's clothes now to give herself a reason to smile-- perhaps turn them a neon green or a sequined orange-- but if she doesn't have the magic to glamour her eyes she sure as hell won't have the magic capacity for that. She shrugs nonchalantly at the comment regarding the smell, not offended in the slightest. "Too much perfume will smell like ass, no matter how nice it is." Rest in peace, perfume! It simply had to be done. "That was Mammy's whole shtick. Sniffing out secrets. Overwhelming her senses before she could overwhelm us was obviously our key to success." She purses her lips and examines her nails. "Such a shame that your rank zombie stench wasn't enough to make her combust on the spot."

Lettie shivers. The cold's creeping in again, making itself at home in her bones, even with the warmth radiating off of her from the nearby flames. Her stomach grumbles softly as if responding to Juno's comment about starving before she can. She might've said something about the pirate being a terrible host, shoving her into a closet before offering her something to eat, but the exhaustion is truly setting in now and she can't find the fight in her to comment. "Dying in a frozen wasteland with you... that'd be so lame." She stares up at the sky. Now that the snowstorm has blown by, she finds it's much bluer than the sky in Juju's world. Briefly, she wonders if the pirate was joking about the roast wasp comment she'd made and decides that for right now, she'd rather not know. "Marjorie will come through for us. I mean, surely the skellies are going to notice this giant-ass fire eventually."

They do come through. Eventually. And Lettie can't help feeling a little bit proud of her solution back there, however messy it might've been. The fire keeps them warm while they wait and the fire itself sends up an effective smoke signal for their rescue from the freezing cold. This whole mess is tied up with a fiery, destructive little bow as far as she's concerned!

Well, except for the fact that 'rescue' doesn't necessarily mean 'rescue' for the faerie. For all extents and purposes, she's still a prisoner while she's on this ship. However, she absolutely refuses to be shut away in the closet... and she gets the sense that Juno knows better than to press her luck after the way that turned out last time. Or maybe she's too spent from the fight to set her foot down on that matter. Either way, it works out in Lettie's favor! Thankfully the cool skellie crew has her back, too. Sure, she gets the sense they won't disobey their captain or let her leave or anything like that. But they don't treat her like a captive, at the very least. This is especially apparent when they eagerly help her set up and decorate her new room on the ship. Sure it doesn't equate to the captain's digs or anything like that-- but it's still leagues better than the cell and the closet combined. She selects the cleanest and largest one she can find, with plenty of natural lighting and quickly gets to work making herself at home.

Now Lettie's clothes are sitting in a bucket of water to clean after that disgusting candyland nightmare. (The water being melted snow-- because apparently that's the only option she's got in these dire circumstances. Excruciatingly dire, because the pirate had not in fact been lying about the roast wasp.Yuck!) She bathed to the best of her ability and Inez had fetched her one of the pirate's shirts for her to wear in the meantime. It suffices, she guesses, as the hem reaches her thighs and effectively fits her like a nightdress. Marjorie procured a chair and some blankets. As the faerie rests, she's finally able to glamour her eyes with an acceptable shade of turquoise and gives her hair a soft shade of pink. Now she sits sideways in the chair (mostly to avoid pressing her poor wings up against the back of it) and languidly fixes the paint on her toenails. She sticks her foot in the air and tilts her head as she gets a better look at them.

"What do you think, Abby?"

"Hmmm?" Abigail slowly lifts her head. Then she nods her head just as slowly and settles her hand to her jaw. "Yes, good. They're very shiny, Olette."

"Right? It's pretty, I love the--" Lettie pauses when she notices the pirate in the doorway. Looking grouchy as ever! "Good morning, captain sleepyhead. It's impolite to barge into a lady's room without knocking, you know." She rolls her eyes. "Did you need something?"
 
The second Juno notices Ophelia's eyes are on their ghost shit, she immediately shuts the fuck up and sits down in front of one of the small fires with her knees pulled into her chest. It could be chalked up to her just being tired; after all, she's spent most of the day discovering ice giants, snow demons, and creepy fucking anthropomorphic mammoths exist. That worlds outside her own even exist is a huge fucking deal, too, that she has hardly begun to process. So it's possible for anyone to assume that Juno is just reflecting and totally isn't scared of what she sees when those glacial white eyes make their appearance.

Except that when the crew does find them, Juno flat out avoids looking at the faerie, let alone acknowledges her at all. It's like she doesn't exist (and honestly, that might be preferred between the two of them). This is probably why the pirate doesn't try to shove her back into the prison below deck or trap her in a closet. (Of course, she also doesn't think about how this will result in the faerie making herself at home.)

Back on the ship, the pirate wanders off to do her own thing––mainly checking on everything to make sure the ship hasn't fallen to complete disrepair during her absence and also assessing any damage from the apparent rager Ophelia and the skeletons threw. Then she makes sure that all the zombies and dead bodies are being stripped for valuables and sent to the decay chamber so that she can harvest their bones later. She also does an inventory of the food, water, other supplies that she supposes she will have to share for the time being. This does mean she allocates all the disgusting bug shit to the bug and allows herself the stock of flavorless sludge. (In some ways, Juno thinks she's totally doing Ophelia a solid. Like, she's allowing her the flavored crap. Yeah, the flavor is hot garbage, but it's something.)

At some other point, Juno has the idea of trying to hunt for better food and then quickly decides against that when she steps out into the cold. They can just starve if it comes down to it since the cube has decided to fucking strand them here. She sighs and returns to her cabin, taking note that the faerie has claimed one of the many empty rooms for herself. 'Whatever.' (Juno doesn't have the spoons to deal with that and she doesn't really want to hear it from Marjorie or Inez if she were to force the faerie into less than pleasant digs. Not that she has to listen to those idiots, mind you, they're just fucking bones with a spirit stapled to them. It's just that she doesn't want to deal with their annoying nagging and, well, she can privately admit that Ophelia did help get them out of shit earlier. Even if it was probably her fault to begin with, even if she stole one of Juno's bombs, even if she blew up their jackets... it did stop that fuck from dredging up more repressed memories. The pirate supposes that earns the faerie a fucking room. Besides, with her back on the ship, there's little chance she'll be able to escape with her crew always milling about. Not unless she's able to get the cube to teleport only herself and, somehow, Juno doubts she knows how to control it given her prior statement that it's temperamental magic.)

In the privacy of her room, she straight up passes out in the middle of taking off her boots. (This is normal.) Since she fell asleep at her desk, she doesn't notice all the blankets are missing from her bed until she wakes up and attempts to go burrow in them for a few more hours. When she realizes that nothing but her sheets are there, her delirious brains first reasons that they had been tossed around her cabin during the drop. But they're nowhere to be found. Then she reasons, perhaps Marjorie stuffed them in her closet, since she is a known dumbass. She kicks the nightstand to the side, not even bothering to guess why it's there, and opens the door. "Ahh––" she yelps, eyes widening as a crispy fucking Clay falls out of the closet and topples on top of Juno, nearly sending her backwards. "What the fuck!"

Well, with her heart pounding like that, she's definitely fucking awake now. "That fucking faerie!" Not that she has any evidence––after all, her stupid fucking idiot bone crew could easily have been responsible, but for some reason blaming the faerie makes the most sense in this scenario. She grabs the corpse's collar and drags the body through the ship. (Yeah, he was an adult fucking man and weighs a fuckton and a half but does that slow Juno down? No. The liquid rage in her veins is maxing out her strength and she's almost positive she could have punted that stupid ice giant to the moon had she been at her current levels of anger yesterday.)

Once she arrives at O... uh, Ophelia's room she pushes the door open and glowers until she's acknowledged. "You little fucking shit," she accuses, hurling the corpse into the room. It lands face up at the base of the chair. "Care to fucking explain before we go test out if your fucking wing healed?" (Somewhere she notices that something is different about the faerie, but she can't place it.)

While she's waiting for an answer she also fucking realizes the faerie is in one of her shirts, lounging in her dining chair, and that her blankets are on this bitch's bed! "Wait, what the fuck?!" Juno invites herself into the room, storming to grab her blankets and flinging Inez off the bed. "You fucking thief! You little fucking punk––do you know what happens with thieves?"

"Ohh, I know this one," Abigail sighs, kicking her feet while she lies on her front, "They get a puppy! I once received a puppy after stealing, because I stole the puppy. Where is Ms. Olette's puppy?"

"I fucking told you to never fucking open your mouth!" Juno points at the skeleton like an angry teacher might a naughty student, before turning back to Olympia, since that's apparently her name. "Have fun dealing with Clay, bitch." She smiles, then snaps her fingers and, yes, the dead body of the person who used to be the bane of her existence springs to life. Sort of. His body twitches then spasms before his legs start pushing him up off the floor, thrusting his hips in the air; then his arms join in to help, pushing up the rest of his torso. His head spins around to right itself (rather than just flipping over entirely) and he starts crawling around the room like a disturbing spider rather than a semi-regular person. This is either Juno's intention (it's not) or she's bad at raising zombies (she is). Either way the creep factor pleases her.
 
Lettie makes a pinched little face at the corpse. He looks kinda familiar. Oh! That guy. What's his name again? Something that starts with a C. A word that was also suited to an object of some kind. "Oh. It's that Carpet guy. What a creep!" That's it. Totally. She shudders and then purses her freshly moisturized lips at Juno. "I can't believe you thought that I wanted to date him! Do you know what happened right before we landed in ice world? I caught this bastard watching me change, Juno. Like I get we have our differences, but you could've fucking warned me that he was a--" Noticing that Juno was getting her rage on over other things at this point, she rolls her eyes and flexes her drying toes, waiting patiently for the pirate's anger to inevitably direct itself at her again.

"Aw, a puppy!" Lettie meanwhile, acknowledges Abigail's story with a sigh of delight. Oh, how cute! And next to the undeniable cuteness? Well, maybe she's just content to find a kindred spirit in this sweet skellie. (Cough. Or rather a fellow kleptomaniac. Cough, cough.) Of course, this also touches on the memory of one of her earliest heists. "I stole a unikitty once. Hybrid between a unicorn and a cat. A 'magical accident', the Elders called it. They were gonna put it down. I know, right? Totally uncool! And obviously I didn't think that was very fair so I--"

But of course, miss overkill the pirate has to interrupt their friendly chat before she can get to the fun part of the story.

"Rude!" Lettie scolds the pirate right back on Abigail's behalf. Then she blinks when the corpse on the floor is referred to as Clay. She snaps her fingers as recognition flickers in her mind like a lightbulb. A very belated lightbulb but a lightbulb nonetheless. (Like getting an answer on multiple choice wrong and saying 'I was totally going to pick that one instead!' upon seeing the right answers. Not that she relates, of course, because... heh, cheating is righter than all of the right answers in the world combined. What? Magic's all about knowing how to find the loopholes, knowing how to glide past the archaic systems. Work smarter, not harder. It's a valuable life lesson.) Well, Clay... Carpet. Close enough. Doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. "Oh. That's what it was. Can't say I cared enough to remember." She lifts a brow as she watches the corpse jerk around in a way the faerie can only describe as unholy. What is this? What the actual hell is she looking at right now? "Ew, gross! Talk about magical accidents." She puffs her cheeks as she watches the corpse crawl around, vaguely annoyed more than anything. "Ugh, geez. Can't you wait 'till a reasonable hour before you start acting like a creep, Juju? I was painting my nails here!"

This is an offense of the highest degree in the faerie's book. Or one of the highest degrees. Either way, it's pretty high up there.

"Besides, you tried to steal my life first, caging me up to sell me off to your stupid Duchess and you don't see me throwing a fucking tantrum!" Sealing the little vial of nail polish securely, Lettie tosses it haphazardly into her pocket dimensional purse and reaches for the knife Juno had given her the other night, flipping it nimbly in her fingers. It's apparent that at some point she doused the thing with pearly glitter and tied a pink ribbon to the hilt, officially marking it as her own. "Like, excuse me for trying to make the best of an utterly shitty situation."

"...What is this, anyway? This some kind of initiation thing?" Lettie glimpses Abigail and Inez for an answer and they both shrug in unison. The faerie shrugs herself before leveling the tip with the zombie, testing a few careful flicks of her wrist before tossing the knife with a stunningly graceful accuracy into Carpet's head, effectively stopping his creepy crawlie spider crawl around her new room. (And okay, fine! She isn't that good. Although she wishes she was. 'Cause that'd be badass. A glyph traced into the hilt might've given her just a teeny bit of help where her aim was concerned. Again. It's all about cheating the system. What else is a tiny faerie to do in a world filled with things that want to own or kill her?) She rises from the dining chair like a queen rising from her throne, stomping her foot down to flatten Carpet on the ground like, well, a carpet before yanking the knife out. She dangles the now disgusting knife between two fingers, tossing it back into her bag before captain cupcake can perceive it as a threat. (If snowballs are the equivalent to bombs, what the hell is a knife going to be? The faerie's pretty confident she's not going survive to know the answer if she tests her luck in that department.) That done, she holds her hands out to imply that she's not going to do anything more. Easy, pirate. "That felt kinda good. Dude seriously had it coming after ogling me." She glares at the pirate, then. "And like, as much as I'd love for him to stay for target practice, he smells positively rank! Can you get him the fuck out of here now?"
 
"Well, excuse me for assuming you’d wanna fucking date him. It’s not my fucking fault that you reek of bad decisions. A decision like that would just align with the fucking disaster you attract." Not that Juno has much evidence to back this biting review, but she still doesn't think she's necessarily wrong given everything. Like, everything currently wrong with her life is Olympia's fault and anyone who denies that fact is a fucking moron.

Privately, while Abigail and Olympia exchange adventures in kleptomania (and the pirate fucking doubts the veracity of the faerie’s story––like how the fuck would the combination of a kitten and an ear of corn even work?), she wrestles with the goddess. Just what in sweet fire did the pirate ever do to deserve this? To deserve being stuck on some frozen wasteland, that makes her home planet feel like a fucking paradise, with the most annoying person in the world (or worlds, as it would turn out)?! An annoying person who she would readily snap in two were it not for the fact that said annoyance holds the key to her getting out of this place in her stupid magic circle thing! (Admittedly, once she found a moment of privacy, she had tried to mimic the weird gestures the faerie does to summon the magic circle. So far she has only been successful in making herself feel like an utter fucking fool. She's a necromancer not a fucking raver, after all.)

"Y'know, if you didn't want creep hours to start so fucking early, maybe you should have fucking thought about what the fuck would happen when you shoved a dead body into my fucking closet, asshole." It's hard to even deny that it is a rather asshole-ish move to shove someone's corpse in the closet of someone they hate. Just ignore all the ways that Juno definitely deserved it and the isolated incident justifies the necromancer's retaliation.

"Oh my fucking goddess," Juno groans, ruffling her hands through her hair only for it to fall in her face once again. "How many fucking times do I have to tell you to get the fuck over that? It wasn't fucking personal so why don't you magic yourself a fucking bridge and get over it? Might save you a lotta fucking energy that you can use to make your hair less of a disaster." At this point, the pirate is mostly hurling insults anywhere just to see what actually lands. As an insult scientist, it is important for her to gather data and test her hypotheses. That, and the faerie is way too fucking chill and that fucking bothers Juno––mostly because it means she doesn't know her fucking place. "Besides, who hasn't been sold before? It's not a big deal and I'm a pirate. Were you expecting the fucking Ritz? Because this ain't the fucking Ritz. Had you wanted that, you shoulda tried landing on some skyward's extra fucking houseboat."

"A houseboat!" Abigail exclaims, clapping her hands together excitedly, "Oooooh, I promised my friend, a piece of sticky goop, we would have a house and a boat. Had I known they could be com––"

Before that inane tale can continue, Juno knocks the skeleton’s skull from her neck and then kicks it out into the hallway. She glares at Inez, “Help put that moron back together and then get back to your fucking post.” While the skeleton does do as she's told, she doesn't do so without giving Juno a little attitude via rolling her eyes. As she guides Abigail's headless, floundering body towards the exit, she says a quick goodbye to the faerie, "Toodles! Let us know if you need anything, Olette."

While Clay's corpse crawls around the room like some deranged thing (hey, finally reflecting his true self!), Juno watches the faerie's reaction. She won't lie, it is pretty fucking disappointing she didn't scream or get more upset. Ugh. What a waste of fucking fuel. (But she does suppose this is data.) "I did fucking warn you about him being a total asshole." Like, what part of sororicidal maniac made the faerie think he was a good person to align herself with? Yeah, he's not a fucking pirate but what are stewards if not the same type of asshole in a uniform? "It's not my fault you thought licking the boot might get you out of your trouble with me, bugsy. A word to the wise, never trust a fucking uniform. They're just bullies with authority. Unlike myself, a complete fucking delight in comparison."

She'd probably go on about her anti-steward propaganda, but watching Olympia flick her glittery knife (why does it look familiar?) into the zombie's head sort of distracts her. To put it mildly. (To her credit, her lips only part partially, but her eyes, unfortunately, give all her surprise away.) Yeah, she hadn't expected that. She swallows hard. Then, realizing she's slipped, she steels herself and goes back to her general air of being unimpressed. She rolls her eyes. "Whatta lucky fucking shot, but he's staying here. Consider him your new roommate, since you love hanging with the other dead pieces of shit on this ship," she grins. "See, I can even be fucking thoughtful."

Juno then makes herself comfortable on the bed––since, technically, it's her bed because this is her ship and everything fucking on it belongs to her. "Since you're up... Mind getting to work on that fucking cube? I may not be able to fucking sell you off quite so easily," she admits, "but I don't make a habit of keeping prisoners. You're fucking costly pieces of shit. So either make yourself useful or I'll toss you and figure out this wasteland on my own." As perilous as that endeavor might be, nothing about Juno's tone or look suggest she's lying. The pirate will shoot them both in the foot if it makes economical sense to do so. Plus, she's already doubting the faerie's ability to deliver on treasure.
 
A fucking delight? Fucking thoughtful? Lettie thinks-- no, Lettie knows-- that the pirate is giving herself way too much credit for doing absolutely zilch but be an ass and get on her nerves. (And while she gauged the situation was dire from her chats with the skellies, she highly doubted that the few disgusting wasps she so generously spared counted as much of an expense. She isn't nearly as high maintenance as she looks, okay!? In fact, it's a totally unfair stereotype to peg the girly girls as the root of all evil.) And after making herself at home on her bed, Juju decides that she wants to see the cube. Shit! As together as Lettie might seem, the truth is that she has nothing together. While she doesn't think the pirate will really toss her overboard while the cube's still in her possession (clearly they both hate this hunk of ice enough that they can at least agree on the fact that they want to get the hell off of it) she doesn't doubt that she could totally snap her in half with those stupidly buff arms of hers if she really tests her patience.

Lettie wants to get out of here too. She'd rather try her luck escaping on some other world than brave the ice again. But she also knows that taking the cube out around the pirate is risky business. If it falls out of her hands, she'll also lose the upper hand. She'll lose her ticket to survival. While the cube is the bane of her existence for sure, it's also the only reason she's still kicking.

"You'll 'figure it out', huh? Yeah, sure. I'd love to see you try." Lettie rolls her eyes. Then she tries to scoot Carpet's body away with her foot and finds she's not having any luck. With an exasperated sigh, she yanks him up by the collar instead. "Fine. I want to get out of here too, obviously! Because I didn't land on your fucking ship by choice." The way the pirate talks, though, she certainly doesn't seem to think so. "But he needs to leave. You can't expect me to focus on anything with roast douchebag on my floor." She nearly topples over in her attempts to pull him along, dragging him inch by inch before she's finally able to push him out the door. Whew. Good fucking riddance!

Lettie brushes her hands together and then ambles over to the chair, making an elegant show of the way she lounges in it once again. 'Cause no way is she sitting in bed with the pirate.

"Anyway. You got it, cap!" Lettie salutes with two fingers before nimbly tracing a glyph in the air and flicking it in the pirate's direction. "But I really think we ought to match if we're going to be lab partners. How about you?" Hehe. She turns the pirate's all-black attire a pale shade of pink that matches her hair and immediately giggles at the sight. (Well. Even if the faerie dies-- which is definitely a possibility all things considered-- she's pretty sure it'll have been worth it.) Besides, she had to get Juno back for the stunt with Carpet somehow. "Looking cute, Juju!"

While it's true that Lettie might have just sealed her own death sentence, this is also her strategy! By distracting the pirate with unimportant things (like, say, needing to escape to change to reclaim her badass dignity or whatever?) she can buy herself a little more time to experiment with the cube solo! Because she doesn't trust the pirate nearly enough to pull it out around her. Like, what if she tackles her and steals it from her by force? Then what!?
 
Patient as ever, the pirate stretches her arms out behind her to prop herself up on the bed while she waits for the faerie to get the fuck to work. She's not expecting much. In fact, she's hardly expecting anything at all. She's already convinced the faerie is fucking useless and clueless, so at most she is only hoping for the cube to glitch out and take them somewhere else. Preferably back to her home planet. Preferably to the Duchess herself. But Juno knows that she lives a cursed existence, so she tempers her expectations and settles on the realistic hope that they can at least get off this ice waste. (Naturally, she does expect the worse. She somehow believes that once they're out of this frozen hell, they'll end up somewhere worse. Olympia does attract disaster, after all, but at least they won't be fucking frozen. Well, she hopes.)

She pushes her hair out of her face (it immediately falls back over her eyes), idly scratches at her scar, and watches as the bug attempts to drag Clay out of the room. "Aw, you don't like my house warming gift? You're breaking my heart, bug," she snickers. It is amusing watching her struggle with the corpse. It also confirms that Juno is much stronger than her "colleague" and there is infinite comfort in knowing she truly could take the faerie down any moment she pleases. It's a security thing. It's also fun to imagine whenever the faerie gets on her nerves and that's quite fucking often. (Not that it's hard to get on Juno's nerves. It's really nothing to write home about and yet the pirate hasn't experienced this new stimulus in annoyance in... several years? Ah, shit, she doesn't remember the last time the last time she's had to get used to someone else's brand of fucking annoying. Maybe when she summoned Abigail's spirit?)

"Y'know for someone who doesn't know a lick about me, you sure seem confident that I won't throw your ass overboard and figure out this wasteland on my own." She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. It's true that they're better off together (or at least whoever has the cube is better off), but the pirate figures she's toughed out one of the worst environment's out there. Yeah, there's snow demons and haunted fucking cookie houses in this world, but she'll figure it out. She figured out the nightmares. She figured out those academy entrance exams. She figured out running a ship and a skeleton crew on her own. The snow will suck ass, but almost every moment of Juno's life has sucked ass. This is just a different flavor and she'll learn to fucking tolerate it. "I don't keep useless pieces of shit around," and despite her glowing reviews of her crew, she must regard them as valuable if she hasn't ashed them already. "'Specially ones that can't make on their fucking promises. Once you become more of a burden than you already are, I've got no qualms cutting my losses here. I don't think you fucking understand this, but I grew up in fucking hell. There's nothing I can't fucking handle. So I fucking dare you to try me."

Perhaps Juno should have thought about her words before speaking them so confidently because what happens next? Olympia seems to take her on the dare and hexes her! Well, not her, but when she looks down at her clothes, she notices their a fucking disgusting shade of pink–– "Why you fucking!" she can't even finish her thought because she's so fucking irritated.

Immediately, she springs up from the bed and tackles the faerie, knocking the chair over and sending them both wrestling on the floor. "Fucking change my clothes back, you little bitch!" Yeah, obviously Juno's negotiation skills can use some fucking work. "I'm going to fucking strangle you! I'm going to snort your fucking ashes!" What even is the pirate saying? "Dammit––ow!"

Wrestling can cause injuries, if readers were confused, but what hits Juno in that moment isn't the faerie's fist or foot. No, this something smacks Juno square in the back of her head and when she looks back, expecting to find one of the skeletons, she sees the cube. Glowing. "Fuck."

Blip!
 
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