Disaster Dominoes

Disaster Dominoes
Published	January 24, 2011 (2011-01-24)
Page count	33
Major characters	Mike, Lucy, Daisy, Abbey, Paulo
Minor characters	David, Amaya, Haley, Chris
Locations	Mike's house, Roseville High School, Neighborhood sidewalks and streets
Chapter navigation
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Read in the BCI Members' Library

Disaster Dominoes is a non-canon Bittersweet Club International-exclusive comic where everything in Roseville has gone wrong at once: Lucy is dangerously obsessed, Daisy is starving herself, Paulo needs his fix, and Mike is the last sane person holding the line.

Synopsis

Mike's morning starts out ordinary, which is the last ordinary thing in the comic. Lucy is waiting outside, hollow-eyed, fretting over Paulo's party habits on the walk to school. She quietly assures Mike that "Only you will be getting that...", a promise he gently deflects. Sandy is visiting next week, and the route passes a graveyard where Molly already lies buried.

Kizuna gets back from her bathroom break in a state that raises a few questions.

The classroom fills out the rest of the damage. Daisy trembles at her desk, berating herself for having eaten today. Paulo sweats and shakes over a little baggie, while David can barely get Paulo's name out. Kizuna treats the class to a story about the time she killed a mafia assassin. Nobody thinks to question the large knife she takes along when she's excused.

After the bell, Daisy flees to the bathroom in tears, but she isn't alone in there. Abbey hangs out of a hole in the ceiling, cast fully in shadow. He has been keeping watch over everything Daisy does, and he calls it protection.

Mike still believes every one of his friends can be saved, and he spends the day trying to hold everybody together. The comic, of course, has other plans. The dominoes fall right up to the final page — is anyone in Roseville getting out of this day intact?

Character dynamics

• Mike and Lucy: In the main comic at the time, Lucy had confessed to Mike and been turned down for Sandy's sake. The AU swaps the temperaments. This Lucy is devoted to the point of destroying herself, while this Mike is bottomlessly patient, keeping her at arm's length without ever leaving her side.
• Abbey and Daisy: Canon Abbey is Daisy's gentle boyfriend whose deepest fear is turning into his violent father. In this comic he has become exactly that: his devotion has curdled into constant surveillance, and Daisy is in no shape to question it.

Trivia & observations

• Veronica has settled the canon question on Tumblr: some BCI comics are canonical, but Disaster Dominoes is strictly a what-if.
• Per Veronica, it is also the only place Lucy is ever depicted cutting herself, which she has called "so very unofficial".
• Kizuna does not appear anywhere in the main comic. This side story is the whole of her BCB career.

Related chapters

• A Distance Apart: In canon, Lucy confessed and Mike turned her down for Sandy. The AU keeps that triangle and turns the devotion up to something frightening.
• Pillow Talk: The main-comic chapter running when Disaster Dominoes came out — the Mike and Lucy heartache was the live storyline being parodied.
• Love My Way: Canon Abbey stops himself mid-swing here because he refuses to become his abusive father. The Abbey in this comic clearly had no such moment.