Totally forgot about this one. Wrote it August 12th 2011. Originally posted to the forums.

"Harley bit it."

Emily looked up from her knitted. "Bit... bit what, what are you talking about?" C took a seat next to her. "Are you saying he died?"

"Like a fuckin' doornail," he said, settling in.

Emily cursed under her breath. "I should hope someone bothered to kiss him instead of risking the chance that his death could strand him here."

"Keep your fucking panties on," C said. He pulled his sword out of his specibus, just as ridiculously over-the-top as his nonsense shades, and began to polish it. "I kissed the jackass. Fuckin' hottest gay corspesmooch this side of... of..."

He waved a hand over toward the Mesa before them. Emily tried to ignore his hand while he was still pointing to it, and tried to ignore the fact that she had subconsciously drawn a set of weak plastic knitting needles rather than the Quills.

"How did it happen?" she asked instead.

"Jo told her to pie Hephaestus."

"J... Joanna told her..." Emily slammed down her knitting. "Ridiculous girl! She knows the risk as much as any of us." She put her rage into her work. "If I had the time I'd arrange for one of her pranks to backfire on her, and I swear it'd be one that'd make her learn."

"It's the fuckin' cake fumes," C said, adding some extra polish to the spikes and sub-blades alchemy had granted him. "Got to her head and rocked our Crocker off her her crocker, if you know what I mean."

"I try not to," she said, still knitting. "So, assuming all else is well, it is time to proceed?"

"Any time you want, babe," he said, and abruptly tossed his sword off the edge. It clattered on the rocks below. "Any time you want we go throw it all away like it ain't no thing, go play Mom or Dad to four little shits we'll hope don't take too much after their failure parents."

Emily watched him rant, and took her knitting into her inventory. She didn't know why. She was certainly never going to take it out again, it just felt... neater. "I can't see you as a father, Strider."

"I don't see you as a mom, Lalonde, but you can't just walk away from it."

Emily pinched at the bridge of her nose. "It's times like this I wish I had taken up drinking instead of knitting."

C laughed. "That I can handle, maybe." He began a few telltale motions that Emily recognized as futzing about in his inventory. "Was trying to... alchemize a few molotovs... Fuck it." A mass of garbage ejected from his right hand and into a nearby wall, leaving him holding a cheap champagne.

Emily took the bottle with a smirk and turned back to him. "Am I to drink it straight from the bottle?"

"Well if you're gonna make a hobby of it, no."

"I prefer my hobbies to be classy, thank you." She removed the cork with one of her better needles and poured a sample of the bubbly into a standard drinking glass she carried on her at all times. That done, she left it alone and settled in next to her friend. Cool as ever, he was soon leaning against her shoulder with an arm around her back, trying ignore her snort in response.

"Where's your doll?" she asked instead.

"What, Cal?" C shrugged. "I dunno. He's cool. If Sassacre's out wasting perfectly good cream pies on Denizens, I'm sure Cal's having the time of his life."

"His horrible, creepy life," Emily sniped.

"Heyyy..." C cautioned. Cal had always been a bit of a sensitive point to him.

Emily sighed and leaned back into him in turn. "I suppose it makes sense. It's not like we'll remember, anyway."

"You got any stupid plans for your last thirty seconds, then?" he asked.

Emily thought for a moment. "...Yes. Hold still."

Instead, he flinched. "Is this about your eighth birthday?" he stammered at once. "Because if you're gonna gut I'd like to know why. Also, I don't think gag gifts make it justifiable murder."

Emily rolled her eyes. "Oh for goodness' sake, Strider, just promise to hold still."

He let down his guard, slowly. "...'k."

Emily made sure he was waiting properly, and then turned about. Slowly, she took his face in her hands, and he flinched.

"Calvin," she warned.

"That's 'C'," he said, as he had a thousand times in the past, and for the thousandth time, Emily ignored him. He had kept his eyes closed, so she repeated her touch and leaned toward him, until their lips almost touched and he, predictably, freaked out.

"What was that?" he said.

"You're impossible," she replied, and picked up her champagne.

"No," he said when she turned, and "no..." again as she started to walk away. "...What the hell was that?"

"Maybe I just wanted to spend my last thirty seconds finally messing with your head, Strider."

"Oooh no," he said. "You're not pulling that crap just to... hey! Hey!" She laughed as she got further away. "...Okay," she heard him say, almost scrounging for words under his demeanour. "Here's an idea: you kiss me earliernext time and maybe this won't be embarassing for both of us."

"Next time..." Emily repeated with a laugh. She found her eyes drawn to her champagne, but she tossed it aside. "I can wait for next time. Because we'll certainly be the same age and in geographic proximity."

"Oh, definitely," he said, muttering. "...Hey, Em? If mackin' with me's your actual bucket list thing, I can pretend to be fucking grown-up about it. For serious."

"Strider, you are full of yourself," Emily said from the centre of the Mesa. "I just wanted to get the taste of dead friend off your lips."

He shrugged, as though it was the least of his concerns, as ever. "Then what do you want?"

Emily frowned, the wind about the Mesa catching her skirts. "...I wanted to actually see the new world. You know. The one we were supposed to create. Something to tell me we had accomplished something."

C had no way to reply to that. "...Your kid'll see it," he said as consolation.

Emily nodded. "I guess I'll see him or her soon enough. If the media is in any way accurate, the joy of motherhood should be... comparable," she said, as though it were a sort of black joke.

"You say hi to her for me," he said. "In case you're a Mom and I'm a Grandpa, eh?"

She nodded. "What about you?"

C jerked his finger to the spirograph behind his head. "That thing go to the top of those jenga blocks you call a house?" Emily nodded. "...Gimmie thirty seconds, and seven seconds of drop," he said. "I'm gonna jump."

Emily could not help but laugh at that. "...One," she said. "Two. Three."

C turned and ran toward the portal, as fast as though it were all he had left in the world. "Four. Fi-"

The ground rent, split up by an explosion from below. A mine. C's body more slumped then flew, as his leg blew off and he lost balance. "Calvin!" Emily shouted, running toward him, only to be cut off by a squealing yell as she was ambushed from behind a boulder. She rolled to the ground and drew the Quills of Echidna like she should have done a long time ago, and stabbed at her attacker. She drew blood, but her attacker kept in motion, surprising as she knew her attacks were strong enough to kill any of the local imps. The attack had thrown her attacker all the same, and she rolled over and got to her feet.

The Courtyard Droll, bleeding out of his right shoulder, immediately tossed a cartoonish, black sphere bomb at Emily's face. She knew from experience with him not to toss it back - his reflexes were much better than they looked - so she tossed it away and lunged before he could react to this new strategy. She struck him once, twice in the head, and he fell, where she pinioned him through the heart to the ground.

Moving fast, she retrieved her weapons and went to her friend. "Calvin," she said, when she saw his eyes move to her. Her Seer powers left her with the unfortunate ability to see the game mechanics as well, as she kept her eyes off of his freefalling health bar. "Calvin, they've found us out. I don't want to say this, but if I'm to revive your dreamself, you must... die faster."

"...ain't no thing," he said, coughing blood. He seemed for a moment to be reached toward his own wound, to aggravate it or possibly to draw one of his back-up weapons, but he never made it. Instead, he reached up and gestured for her to come closer. When she leaned in, it was she that had to pull closer for the kiss, as he had lost what remained of his strength. When she let him go, his head lolled to the left, toward the Mesa. "Got company," he whispered, before his extensive health bar finally gave out. Emily kissed him again fast, without intensity, and noted that his wound had begun to staunch. That was good enough for her.

She rose up, and turned toward the Mesa to see exactly what she had suspected. Imps. Liches. Giclopses peering over the edge. Behemoths. Sphinxes. The Draconian Dignitary, with his best spear. The Archagent and his best knife. The Hegemonic Brute and the best rock he found on the way there. And the worst of them all. Emily prayed that C would inform the others as soon as he revived.

"Delightful," she said to the assembled crowd through gritted teeth. "I would have hated to think all my levelling had gone to waste."

"One hour." It was the role of the Queen of Derse to guard her kingdom at all costs. Her kingdom was now threatened by this very Mesa. "One our, and the Battlefield will fall."

"That's funny," Emily said. "You still think we're playing the game. We're not." An hour. Well, if all she had was an hour, she was going to make it count. She was going to make sure she saw her daughter, who would see the new world for her. Emily called the image of the sun into her mind, and her body and weapons began to sear with the power of Light.

"It's over, chessmen! We're upending the board!"

But seriously, the Guardians need first names.