I love the vibe of the one paragraph that starts out “so far, so good,” and then goes on to describe the agents suffering and in pain, and then says the badfic continues “before the agents could get too comfortable.” That is some extremely PPC-tone narration!

“Family tradition” is quite a weird euphemism for “crimes committed against your ancestors.” Like, strip the fantasy elements away from it, and it’s basically, “Sorry, Akira, but your grandmother Ariel got straight-up murdered, and then your mom Melody also got murdered, so now it’s a tradition, and you’re going to have to die. There’s no way out of it, we are forever beholden to what has come before us, and have no choice but to repeat the horrors of the past. That’s just how it works, and we can’t question it.” Stupendous, with emphasis on the “stupe” part. Also, I didn’t understand right away that “sweaty” was a typo of “sweety,” and thought Melody was being written to be a cruel mother figure for tragic purposes. I’m awful for laughing, but the mental image of a mother greeting her child in the morning with “Good morning, Sweaty” was so unexpected it became instantly hilarious.

Cave of . . . Wounders?

Three figures approached from inside the mouth-entrance of the cave.

A hulking man wearing a skull mask hoisted a massive hammer. “Bow before me on the fields of Kombat, weakling!”

A clown wearing a purple suit grinned and drew a dagger menacingly in front of his mouth. “Let’s put a smile on that face!”

A green ogre-demon with an unsettling amount of eyes opened his hands, flames pouring out of them. “My chaos consumes all in the end!”

—doctorlit would have traded Ariel his legs for her singing voice, no sea witches necessary!