Timeout and Power Thongs

Posted on Tue May 12th, 2026 @ 12:19am by Patin & Captain Marie Batel

1,659 words; about a 8 minute read

Mission: Pirates!
Location: Celestial Temple

One second Patin stood at Rhenora’s shoulder, the heat of battle humming through a ship that refused to die. The next, the pressure vanished. Sound thinned. Light stretched. The bridge, the smoke, the bodies, the urgency of it all pulled away like breath leaving lungs that had forgotten how to hold it.

Patin stilled. Her eyes shifted once, sharp, already knowing. “...Ah,” she muttered, low and almost amused. “There it is.” She acknowledged they had finally crossed some invisible line.

The Temple reasserted itself without apology. Columns rose where bulkheads had been. Mist replaced fire. The echo of consequence lingered like a taste that refused to fade. The Prophets did not appear. They resolved.

The line was observed.

The line was approached.

The line was crossed.

Their voices pressed in from every direction, layered and absolute, each word settling into place like something that had always been true.

Patin rolled her shoulders slowly, jaw shifting as she glanced upward into the unseen. “Yeah, well,” she said, casual in a way that bordered on defiant, “lines are more like... suggestions.”

The Temple tightened. Intervention alters flow.

Flow defines outcome.

Outcome extends beyond the immediate.

Images flickered at the edges of perception. Not shown. Implied. Threads pulling outward. Ripples touched places neither of them had stood.

Patin’s expression didn’t crack, though something in her stance settled heavier into her hips. “And doing nothing alters it too,” she shot back, quieter now, but no less certain. “Difference is, I prefer the version where people keep breathing.”

The guardian influences the protected.

The protected shapes the future.

The future is not singular.

Patin huffed a soft breath through her nose, one brow lifting. “You say that like it scares me.”

The light shifted. Sharper, not brighter.

You were permitted to observe.

You chose to act.

Her smirk returned, thin and unapologetic. “You gave me hands,” she said, lifting one slightly as if to demonstrate. “Don’t go getting all surprised when I use them.”

The Temple flexed inward, pressure gathering.

The line exists to preserve balance.

Balance was strained.

Correction is required.

Patin clicked her tongue softly. “Correction,” she echoed, tasting the word like it offended her. “That’s a fancy way of saying ‘timeout.’ ”

She glanced around, spreading her hands slightly at the endless, ageless expanse. “Which is impressive, by the way, given that time doesn’t actually exist here. Real creative punishment structure you’ve got here.”

A faint ripple moved through the Temple.

Containment is not punishment.

Containment is instruction.

Instruction continues.

Patin let out a quiet laugh, softer now, something edged with tired recognition. “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve noticed.”

Her gaze drifted, not searching, simply knowing where to look. “She’s still in there,” she added, voice lowering. “Still fighting. Still choosing.”

The Rhenora persists.

The Rhenora must persist.

Your proximity increases probability.

That landed. Patin’s expression shifted, just slightly. Less defiant. More... anchored. “Funny how that works,” she murmured.

You will remain adjacent.

You will influence within tolerance.

You will refrain beyond the line.

Her eyes narrowed faintly. “And if I don’t?”

The moment stretched. Then... You will learn.

Patin stared into the nothing-that-was-everything for a long while. Then, her crooked smile returned. Smaller this time. “Yeah,” she said under her breath. “That tracks.”

She rocked back on her heels, exhaling, the fight bleeding out of her shoulders in increments she didn’t bother to hide. “Alright,” she added, glancing off to the side as Marie still stood just out of frame. “Looks like I’m in timeout.”

She smirked. “Try not to enjoy the quiet too much.”

Marie watched the interaction - quietly - watching - learning. How would they react? Why did they care so much but yet limit the amount of caring they could do? The juxtaposition made her brain hurt just thinking about it.

The Temple settled. All hail the power thong. The statement landed with the same weight as any other truth.

Patin blinked once. Then barked a short, incredulous laugh. “I am never letting you live that one down,” she muttered, shaking her head as she dragged a hand through her hair.

The light softened again, though the pressure remained. Boundaries, reasserted. Watched. Measured.

A choice approaches.

The form is not yet fixed.

The continuation must be determined.

Patin’s gaze dropped, somewhere distant, somewhere very close. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I, I'm getting to it.” Her posture shifted again, not retreating, not advancing. Settling into something in between. A presence at the edge. Close enough to matter. Far enough to be allowed.

A guardian. For now. Until she decided what came next.

Marie looked at Patin - essentially in the naughty corner - all views of the current timeline obscured from their eyes to prevent any further meddling. They'd found the line.

She tried to move forward herself - testing the boundaries to see if they applied to herself as well as Patin. The temple flexed, but didn't not yield. She pouted like a teenaged who'd been grounded.

"How can you claim to care so much - about the Sunfire, about Rhenora - yet you prevent us from doing REAL good to help her out of this mess that somehow you've created. They're fighting over my damned body for goodness sakes - now tell me that isn't screwed up beyond all recognition. And what the heck is a power thong?" Her hands were on her hips, shoulders set in a determined posture and her chin raised and defiant.

The Temple did not rise to meet Marie’s defiance. It absorbed it. The space around them tightened in quiet, immovable certainty. The kind that did not argue because it did not need to.

The Rhenora must survive.

This is observed across all paths.

The words settled like stone dropped into still water, ripples spreading outward into things unseen.

Perspective defines contradiction.

A faint shift passed through the Temple, something like the turning of an unseen page.

You perceive conflict.

We perceive continuity.

The Rhenora is origin.

The Rhenora is continuation.

The Ma of the Future. The phrase lingered, familiar and yet no less elusive. The Temple flexed, more gently this time.

You are incomplete.

The understanding is incomplete.

The necessity remains.

Silence followed. The kind that suggested the answer existed... just beyond reach.

Patin huffed a quiet breath beside Marie, arms folding loosely as she tilted her head up toward the unseen, unimpressed and entirely unsurprised. “Yeah,” she muttered, “they do that. Whole lot of words, not a lot of answers. All fluff and no substance.”

Then Marie’s last question caught up with her brain. Patin blinked once then barked out a sharp, genuine laugh, the sound cracking clean through the weight of the Temple like a stone through glass. “Oh... that?!” she said, turning toward Marie with a grin that came back fast and bright and just a little wicked. “Yeah, no, that’s... that’s a whole story.”

She scrubbed a hand across the back of her neck, still grinning, something almost nostalgic flickering behind her eyes. “Let’s just say there was a whole... thing. Questionable decisions were made... and somehow it ended with a piece of clothing becoming significantly more important than it had any right to be.”

Her grin sharpened. “I’ll tell you someday. Or maybe I already have. It's sorta hard to keep track here.”

She tipped her head slightly, studying Marie now, something lighter threading back into her tone. “But trust me,” she added, voice dipping conspiratorially, “when that lesson comes around, you’ll know.”

“They’re not wrong, ya know,” Patin said, quieter now, though the edge never fully left. “About one thing.”

"The fluff without substance?" Marie quipped with her hands on her hips.

“She has to make it. Nozzie.” Not because they said so. But because some part of her had already decided it. Long before any god took notice.

"Then we make sure she does, as much as they'll let us. Which is odd when they say she must continue but don't exactly give us the tools to do so," Marie mused, effectively in her own naughty corner, obscured from anything.

Sitting down, or rather sitting into a floating position a foot off the floor, Patin shrank into herself. "I don't fully get it either. I never know if they are testing or limiting." She sighed.

"It's sort of like that time in the Keldor Province. Spoons had us pinned down, outgunned, backs against the Provincial Border wall, quite literally."

“Nozz was patching up one of the wounded while I was down to scraps and bad decisions.” She chuckled, producing a lit cigar from absolutely nowhere before taking a long drag. “She asked if I could make us a hole so we could escape.”

“Made a bomb outta Jumja gum, tin foil, and a phase-pistol crystallization coil.” Her grin widened around the cigar. “Let me tell you... that blast was glorious.”

“Nozz never gave up, so neither could I. Hell, I’d never have heard the end of it if she outlasted me.” A crooked grin tugged briefly at her mouth before fading again. “You make the best outta bad situations. Use what they give you, use what they don’t, and keep pushing at the edges till something finally gives.” Her eyes flicked upward toward the unseen presence surrounding them. “Even if it’s the gods themselves who'r drawing the lines.”

TBC

 

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