Janus wasn't always as cool and collected a liar as he is now. Also, the split of Creativity, because why not.
*
Pairing(s): familial DLAMPR
Content Warning(s): fire (nobody gets hurt tho), strong language...boi (that's a joke they're kids there's not rly strong language beyond anx saying "dang it" too much for pat's liking), lmk if I should tag anything else!
*
"MORALITY!" Creativity shrieks, racing into the living room and colliding at top speed into said side.
With a loud "oomph!", Morality reaches out to enclose a seven-year-old Creativity in his arms, rocking the other side reassuringly. "Wh-what's wrong, Creativity?" he struggles to pant through having his breath completely knocked out of him.
"D-Deceit's being meeean to me again!" Creativity whines into Morality's shirt.
Morality looks accusingly up at Deceit, who stands faux-innocently in the doorway.
Deceit shrugs. "No I'm not," he defends himself. "I'm just telling the truth. Creativity is a big, weird, whiny baby. It's a fact." He points at Logic smugly. "Ask Logic. He'll tell you."
Cuddled up in his corner, Logic looks up from some fourth grade science textbook that he probably already knows cover to cover. "Please do not bring me into this little tiff of yours," he says imperiously. After a moment, the facade melts, and he brightens. "Didja like that word? 'Tiff'? It was the word of the day in Language Arts today, not that any of you were paying attention. It means—"
"Oh, shut up, nerd," Deceit and Creativity chorus and well, at least there's something they can agree on, Morality supposes.
Disappointed, Logic's face sinks into a pout. "Fine." His lip wobbles dangerously. "I can see when I'm not needed."
And with that, Logic sinks down, presumably off to go bother Anxiety instead.
Morality knows that he should really go after Logic and reassure him that no, he really is needed, and they all really do love him. But with Logic no longer in the living room causing a distraction, Creativity and Deceit start to go off at each other again.
"You're a booger head," Deceit hisses, triumphant. "Logan's the stinky poo-poo side, and you're the booger side, you...you lame person."
"No! I'm not a booger!" Creativity protests, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. "J-just 'cos I thought it was a kinda dance that one time d-doesn't make me the—the—"
Morality tries to gather Creativity back up in his arms, but Creativity pulls away from him, stubbornly glaring at Deceit even as tears start to pour down his trembling cheeks.
Deceit laughs, pointing a finger at Creativity. "And now you're a crybaby! So you're the crybaby side too?"
"H-hey, Dee, you really need to st—" But Morality's pathetic attempt at crowd control is drowned out by a rapidly crescendoing siren.
Creativity is now openly wailing, his feet planted and his head tilted to the ceiling and his mouth gaping wide, and oh, dear, that's never good.
Whenever Creativity starts to cry, it's a toss-up as to whether he'll hide in his room for a week or rampage through the entire mindscape destroying things. There's not really an in-between, and there's no way to tell which he'll do each time.
"You're—you're a liar! You're nothing but a liar!" Creativity asserts, his voice panicky and patchy and tremulous. He points a shaking finger at Deceit in return, trying to laugh at him, but the result is rather pitiful. "Liar, liar, pants on fire!"
Then, all at once, Creativity shifts.
The tears dry up abruptly, and a too-wide, disconcerting grin spreads across his face.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire," Creativity says lowly, smiling way too much for someone who had just been in the darkest pits of despair.
Morality sucks in a breath, holding it, uneasily wondering what Creativity is planning.
Deceit has the decency to look slightly abashed, but he holds his ground nevertheless.
And then his pants burst into flame.
-
Morality is the first to scream, pointing a horrified finger at Deceit's pants.
Deceit, wanting to know what Morality is screeching about, looks down...and promptly begins some screeching of his own, accompanied by little terrified hops all over the place. He dances around the living room, as if that'll somehow magically douse the fire, but the extra exposure to oxygen only seems to be doing the opposite.
"Liar, liar, pants on fire. Liar, liar, pants on fire," Creativity chants delightedly, a manic look on his face.
Logic abruptly rises back up to see what the ruckus is. He takes one look at Deceit running around, body engulfed in flames, and Creativity chanting not unlike a cult member, and Morality screaming...and he sinks back out.
A few moments later, a thoroughly reluctant Logic rises back up, being dragged by a fuming, worried Anxiety.
Anxiety surveys the scene in front of him for one, two, three seconds. Then—
"Deceit! Stop, drop, and roll already, you dummy!" he yells over the din, his voice slightly distorted. "Creativity, you weirdo, stop chanting, dang it!"
"L-language," Morality mumbles brokenly, eyes wide as he watches the scene in front of him slowly begin to wind down.
Deceit pauses for a moment as Anxiety's instructions sink in. Then he stops. Drops. Rolls.
Right onto the couch.
Setting the couch on fire.
"NO, dang it!" Anxiety screams, voice fully distorted now, and Morality is much too concerned with the six foot wall of raging flames to call him out on his strong language.
"Morality, a little help here!" Anxiety calls across the room, and the distorted, fully unadulterated panic shocks Morality into action.
It's time for the Dad Voice. Morality sucks in a big, smoke-filled breath. He chokes. Sucks in another, more careful breath. Tries to make it look vaguely cooler this time.
"STOP!" Morality hollers, his voice magnified, deep, and booming over all the screaming coming from the other sides.
Everyone stops.
Logic stops mid eye-roll. Deceit stops stop-drop-and-roll-ing. Creativity stops chanting. Anxiety freezes in place. Even the fire all over Deceit and the sofa listens to Morality, slowing and shrinking and quickly petering out.
"That is enough," Morality asserts. Gosh, he hates pulling the Dad Voice card on everyone, especially since they're all basically the same age, and it always makes him feel so bad. But the cacophony going on in Thomas' mindscape really was enough. If it got any worse, it would start to affect Thomas in the real world. "Deceit, stop calling people mean names. Creativity, stop setting people on fire."
The two sides in question reluctantly mutter their assent.
"I'm telling Anxiety on you," Deceit threatens Creativity under his breath.
"What the—dude!" Anxiety throws his arms up in the air, frustrated. "I'm literally right here," he snaps, thoroughly Done with everything and everyone. "Who d'you think told you to stop, drop, and roll?" He mutters something illegible to himself before raising his voice again. "God, I wanna say a bad word so much right now but Mo would kill me."
Deceit looks up and over at Anxiety. He stares quietly for a moment, astonished. Then tears begin to well up in his eyes—real tears, for once, not the crocodile tears he likes to pull on Morality to get what he wants. "I—I—Anx!" he blubbers, racing over to Anxiety and burying himself in the slightly taller side's arms without prompting. "C-Creativity set me on fire! I was just pretending with him and he set me on fire!"
Chagrined, Anxiety looks at Morality from over Deceit's head. He rolls his eyes and shrugs, a 'what can ya do'-type gesture.
Morality returns the gesture before sternly turning to handle Creativity. "It doesn't matter what Deceit said or did to you," he says. "We do not set people on fire. You will apologize. Right. Now."
"B-but!" Creativity protests feebly. "He...he started it though."
"And I'm ending it. Right here, right now. Now." Morality places his hands on his hips, staring down at the suddenly-meek side in front of him, quite a far cry from the crazed lunatic that had been present not two seconds ago. "Creativity. I believe you have something to say to Deceit...?"
Creativity nods earnestly, eyes wide and pleading. Then his eyes harden, and he shakes his head. "Yes—no. Yes. Uh." He buries his face in his hand and peeps out at Morality, as if that can protect him. "M-maybe?"
"Uh-uh. There is no maybe in this, mister. It's either a yes or a no." Only a yes, really, but Morality's gonna let the kid choose his own fate, even if that means he gets himself grounded for a month.
"Y-yes. Nooo." Creativity clutches at his face, dropping to his knees on the ground. He lets out a pained cry, then, to everyone's utmost surprise, two strange voices sound in contrast to each other.
"Yes!" one of the voices shrieks, delighted.
"No!" the other strange voice protests in tandem, defiant.
A flash of bright light—brighter than even the flames that had so quickly covered the still-smoking, now-singed sofa. Forced to look away, the sides all cover their eyes, squinting at the incredible brightness.
There is a yell—of pain?—of triumph?—and then, just like that, the light is gone.
-
Logic is the first one to chance opening his eyes, ever the curious soul and wanting to know what just happened. What he sees in the place where Creativity once stood makes him stop and stare, mouth hanging open.
Where Creativity had been standing in the middle of the living room, there are instead two strange new sides—one red, and one green. They both sit, curled up on the floor, disoriented and blinking up at everyone in a sort of tired confusion.
Logic steps forward. "Who...who are you?" he asks, his want to know overruling his wariness. The two of them just look so familiar, but Logic can't for the life of him figure out why.
The two look up at him in tandem, cocking their heads with alarming similarity. They open their mouths.
"Why, I'm Creativity, of course!" they speak in unison, smooth versus garbled speech.
The two of them freeze, turning to face each other, eyes wild.
The green one's face stretches into a wide grin. "Yes...it worked."
The red one begins to shake his head rapidly. "No. Nonono. This isn't happening. You're not Creativity. I am."
"No," the green one says. "No, we are Creativity, brother."
"Uh." Morality clears his throat, guardedly inserting himself into the conversation. He swallows hard when the two supposed Creativities swivel their heads to look at him in unison. "Where's...are you guys Creativity?"
"That's what we just said, isn't it, Mo-mo?" the green Creativity simpers, a sickly sweet smile on his face that he turns on Deceit next, standing up and walking over to him and Anxiety.
Deceit cowers into Anxiety's side as the Creativity approaches him. He peeks his head out, hastily mumbling out a tiny, "'m sorry about...about calling you names."
"It's okay!" the green one says brightly. "I thought they were cool names. I like the idea of being the booger side. It matches my new color scheme!" As if to demonstrate, he picks his nose, wiping it on his new black-and-green outfit. "My brother is just a baby."
Deceit smiles hesitantly, untangling himself from Anxiety and chancing a few steps in the direction of this new Creativity.
"Ew, gross," the red one says, wrinkling his nose in distaste. "I don't like you. You're a stupid Creativity. I should set you on fire too."
"Now, uh, Creativity," Morality steps in again. "We just went over this. Uh. With you when you were...one Creativity?" Patton flounders, unsure of what to refer to either Creativity as. "Don't make me go through it again now that you're...uh, two."
The red one sighs loudly, annoyed. "Fineee!" He pouts before sidling over to Logic. "Nice specs, four-eyes. What are you, a nerd?"
"Yes, and I like it," Logic shoots back.
The two engage in a heated conversation, but it doesn't seem quite so heated as the literal fire that had been raging through the mindscape under five minutes ago, so Morality decides to ignore it for the moment. He zeroes in on the green side, who seems slightly more troublesome.
"Y'know, I can teach you how to light fires like that!" the green Creativity is saying to Deceit, who seems much more interested in the idea than is strictly healthy. "That way we can light my brother on fire as revenge! The fire was my idea, of course, he's not smart enough to come up with it on his own. But he's the one who actually decided to do it."
Green Creativity grabs Deceit's hand with one of his (oh, gosh, that's the booger hand, ew), and Morality watches as the two race over to the basement door, disappearing behind it.
Morality and Anxiety stare each other down, silently battling to see who is sentenced to the grisly death of going down into the basement after the two clear troublemakers.
Eventually, Anxiety relents. "I'll go make sure they don't get themselves killed," he sighs, absolutely Done with the world yet again (let's be honest, though, does he really have any other state of being?). "You three just try not to, um, burn down the house again, please?"
"Will do, Anxie!" Morality says nervously, waving a nervous goodbye as the purple side slinks into the basement, snapping the door shut behind him.
"No promises," Red Creativity and Logic speak up in unison from behind him, then they devolve back into their tits—their—oh, what was that weird new-fangled word Logic had used earlier? gif? tiff?—they just go back to their argument, okay.
Morality turns to face the two of them, trying to feign a smile. After a moment, though, it wriggles off his face, and he sinks his head into his hands, sighing.
Poor Thomas, for having all of these dodos as his sides. Poor Morality, for having to deal with them. He doesn't get paid enough for this. (He doesn't get paid at all, who's he kidding. Is it too late to ask for a different human?)
Turning up the 500-watt smile again, Morality marches over to Logic and this new Creativity. He plants himself between the two of them, internally forcing himself to come to terms with this. This is his new reality now.
"All right, break it up!" Morality instructs. "Mom's making homemade macaroni tonight and if you guys make Thomas act out again, we won't get any."
Creativity and Logic immediately freeze.
"No!" Red Creativity laments. "Not the macaroni! We mustn't lose the macaroni!"
"Indeed, that would be...not good," Logic agrees seriously, nodding his assent.
The final crisis averted, Morality sighs in relief.
And just like that, peace returns to the mindscape of one Thomas Sanders.
Well. Just for the moment, at least.
(Tomorrow, when Green Creativity tries to put slugs in his brother's pants, all bets are off.)
*
This one is so dumb but hey! That's okay! I love it! Like, as much as I love reading dramatic stories about the split of Creativity, in actual canon it's probably going to turn out to be that it happened over something ridiculous, considering the overall mood of the series. xD
Question of the Day: Do you have a least favorite side, or a side that you dislike? If so, who is it, and why?
Answer of the Day: I don't have a least favorite side. That being said, as much as I love Virgil and Remus, I'd have to say they're my least favorite to actually write. I struggle balancing Remus' character between too PG and too R, and I need to work on writing Virgil as his more feral canon self.