#(plus also there’s the whole ghost attack situation as another danger)

[stars-obsession-pit]

Danny always hated Vlad’s attempts to forcibly adopt him, but honestly at the moment he found himself wishing he could go back to them.

Because at least he wasn’t blood related to that fruitloop. Unlike his newest problem.

Oh yeah, it turns out after that whole series of fights with Vlad about him being “Jack’s son”, Jack wasn’t even his actual biological father. Vlad had never known it (despite literally cloning him??), but Danny had been adopted by the Fentons when he was still very young.

And if that’s where things ended, he’d have been fine with that realization. The Fentons are still his family, blood or not. He doesn’t have any issue with that part.

But it turns out his biological father was another creepy rich fruitloop who somehow suddenly found out about Danny and now wants to force his way into his life. A fruitloop that’s even richer and evidently also better at being subtle than Vlad.

Bruce Wayne.

Yeah. He’d never thought he’d use the word “subtle” to describe Gotham’s ditzy playboy, but evidently the man was hiding a lot behind his dumb smile. If not for Tucker’s hacking ability and his own experience with being Phantom, he’d never have even noticed he was being spied on.

But he did notice, and now he’s been barely functioning from the anxiety. They must be planning something, but what? Are they going to try to hurt his family? Blackmail them? Do they believe the GIW’s lies? What if they find out about his powers? Can he even do anything to fight back without Bruce using his money to ruin their lives?

[multiverse--wanderer]

The Hatred Of Love | Ghost x König (Call of Duty) [ENG]

[One Shot based on the OTP between Ghost and König (Call Of Duty) WARNING: This One Shot contains explicit narratives of intimate relationships.Did you like this One Shot? Remember you can read more like it on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MultiverseWanderer In a lonely apartment, two souls meet again under the promise to never do it again. Will they find redemption in each other's arms or will they succumb to the destructive power of their own desire? They will discover that some temptations are too strong to resist and that the path to the deepest pleasure can also be the most dangerous.* Cover image credits to the author.

...

REMINDER:

This story has been written in Spanish, which is my native language. This story has been translated to the best of my ability, although it is possible that it may have mistakes.

This is just a way to transport my writing to a common language for the rest of fans like me. For a better immersion, I recommend reading the story in its original version.

You can find this story on Wattpad and Archive of Our Own.

Thank you so much for reading me and see you in the stars.

...

-'ღ'-

There's no way to get him out of my mind.

There's no way I can find him in another mouth, in other hips.

The situation is becoming the most frustrating, the most ridiculous thing that has happened to me in my fucking life. Driven by the need to turn off my mind for a while and lose myself in a torrid encounter, I have fallen so low that I no longer find pleasure in a body other than his.

With my pants too tight and overly snug, I headed out into the street, back to my rented apartment in the center. Each step is a struggle against the clinging fabric that seems to want to keep me anchored in the memory of what just happened, still throbbing. The night is dark and heavy, and the rain begins to fall; its cold and persistent drops are the only thing that manages to bring me to my senses for a few seconds, allowing me to think clearly about this whole situation.

As I walk, the water soaks my clothes, sticking them to my skin and cooling the burning I still feel in my body. The city is almost deserted at this hour, and the sound of my footsteps echoes through the empty streets, mingling with the constant rustle of the rain. Every drop that hits my face is a reminder of reality, a call to sanity that seems to fade away as soon as it arises. Meanwhile, I make my way through the wet streets, and my mind returns again and again to his face, to the way his eyes looked at me with a mixture of triumph and desire, to how his mouth, that damned temptation, moved over me with devastating precision.

But Alexander wasn't the protagonist that night, Gérard was.

Deciding to go with that beautiful blue-eyed Frenchman I met at the bar was a terrible decision. The twenty-seven-year-old works as secretary to the Minister of Defense and still knows how to add two plus two. My idea had been to have a few glasses of strong alcohol at the bar at the base and calm the need that had been running through my soul for several days now. For a few moments at first, it seemed to work until the double-edged sword of alcohol attacked me from behind worse than I could have ever imagined.

Gérard had noticed my figure long before I had noticed his. He was the one who approached when the bar was closing and invited me for one last drink. I looked at him, contemplated his erotic half-smile, his defined eyes, and saw his intentions as clear as the dawn. He seemed to see the same thing in my eyes, because he decided to stay, not knowing how dangerous this erotic game with me was.

He tried to find out about me but got nothing. I lied on my behalf, I lied in my job, and I lied in my situation. He, however, told me everything about his life in an attempt to get me to reveal something more.

From one drink, we went on to two more. When the curly blonde got tired of waiting, I could feel his hand sliding in a private caress down my thigh in a clear invitation. I took air through my nose for just a few seconds and slowly released it in the same place. It would have been so easy to pull her hand away and say no to her charms (which I had in abundance), but I decided to jump into the hoops. I decided it was the best thing to do to prove to myself that I wasn't in need of a single man with a first and last name.

"Let's go to my hotel room." He was continually whispering in my ear.

Under the need that my body needed and under the provocations of the pure French worker, I decided to accept.

He kissed and moved well, he knew how to unfold his eroticism in every honeyed word he uttered. He managed to make me believe, on more than one occasion, that perhaps I could reach that long-awaited orgasm with him. He liked rough sex and only asked for more in response to the grips that my firm hands were subjecting to him. I could see his eyes, half-closed and moist with pleasure, flash in a bright blue that he didn't recognize. I searched his orbs for Alexander's tired eyes without realizing it, and it was only when I couldn't find his deep, murky seas did I realize that I couldn't find any kind of excitement in Gérard's.

It was a desperate attempt to fill a void, a pale reflection of what I really wanted.

I turned him around, put him on his back, and he clung to the pillow. He moaned so loudly against it that it reverberated in the hotel room. I saw his body, thin and sculpted in marble-like perfection, which gave me a strange feeling of nausea.

Not because of him, but because of myself.

Every movement felt empty, every moan, a mockery of what had once been a dance of true passion. Gérard's perfection only highlighted the imperfection of what he felt at the time. I missed the warmth, the intensity, the electricity that went through me every time Alexander touched me.

Underneath makeup that concealed my own scars and tattoos so as not to be recognized by anyone, were hidden wars that only one man had licked with desire and tinges of love. My whole world started to fall apart and despite the frustration and drive to keep going, I couldn't do it. I wasn't getting anywhere, and to the shore I was approaching, I refused to anchor myself.

Gérard had already reached orgasm several times. When he reached his third, as scandalous as it was appetizing, I pulled out and moved with disgust in search of my clothes. He turned to look at me and from his trembling voice came a "are you leaving?" that pleaded for more. I didn't answer, it was a question that didn't need an answer.

And now I find myself wandering the sidewalk in the rain, on my way to the sober apartment I had rented for the duration of the mission. I found myself cursing myself for being such an idiot once again. He'd had too many sporadic relationships to know how it worked. The reason I did it was to find an oasis pleasure amidst so much chaos and pain, and lately my only livelihood of feeling something was fading away like sand under salt water.

It's all his fault. Because of him.

When I got inside the apartment, I didn't even turn on the lights. I let the gloom from the window of the high-rise building where the apartment was located decorate the interior with dark and subtle tones. I moved straight to the luxurious bathroom and only turned on one of its many lights.

Over the sink, I took off my soaked dark T-shirt and proceeded to remove all the makeup I had on my torso. I peeled off the thin prosthetics that concealed the larger scars and removed all the makeup that covered the more specific or recognizable marks, like the tattoo on my arm. I left the faucet running and allowed the warm water to do the rest as I rubbed with my hand, unconsciously trying to remove all the remnants of that night and what I had become.

The brown dye I had put in my hair fell in small, weak drops down my neck, washing away its false color to reveal the blonde that defined my appearance. I wiped away the remnants that the rainwater hadn't managed to remove with a towel and threw everything into the laundry basket.

The phone resting on the counter beside the sink I was now cleaning with my hands vibrated, and its screen lit up. An incoming message appeared on the screen, and as if the bastard had known how to read my mind, he wrote to me.

"König: I miss you."

A measly message that managed to completely destroy me. All the barriers I was trying to build, all the distances... Such an everyday message from him and yet the one I needed least at this moment.

I clenched my fists against the marble sink and cursed his figure over and over again. I cursed him, knowing that it wasn't unusual to receive such messages from him, that I was the one who always ignored his private messages, and yet now I needed anything but that.

He no longer wrote me "I need you," which indicated unbridled sex driven by his explicit need. Now he wrote "I miss you." What the hell did that mean? I knew the answer firsthand; I just needed to look at my current situation, I just needed to look in the damn mirror.

Not being able to have a casual relationship with anyone because no one can meet my standards like he does. Looking for him in other lips and finding nothing but sand under my tongue. Everything escalated far beyond a simple "I need you." It escalated to the point where I missed him, missed him so much that any ghost pretending to be him was just a blurred shadow.

And I hated it. I hated him so much for it.

The cumulative anger of the night escalated with every thought, and he was responsible. He was the reason I felt my blood boil with rage. I can't understand why everything is so different with him, why I can't settle for other relationships, and why that damn six-foot-nine kid can't stop drilling into my head for a single second.

It had been more than a month and a half since we had seen each other outside of work. The closer I got to him, the more uphill it became. He sought my gaze like a puppy seeks its owner. He sought crumbs of attention like a hungry dog and received nothing but indifference from me.

Why is he still here?

I picked up the phone and opened his message. I saw all the messages I had from him with no response, and I almost felt guilty. Then I remembered the reason I walked away from him, and I knew it was to spare him all the suffering I was causing him.

He couldn't find happiness by my side because I could only give him pain, and that's the last thing he deserves.

He, who despite everything being darkness in his world, lets all the light that continues to shine within him show when he's with me.

"Ghost: Come to my apartment now."

...

CONTINUE READING THE FULL CHAPTER HERE:

[violetwolfraven]

Ray Molina: Best Dad Ever

For the March 11th explosion of content thing. Just Violet being a fantom and doing my part for this!

Tw: mentioned death, mentioned abusive parents, mentioned panic attack.

So the boys can be seen and heard when directly touching Julie after the whole post-Orpheum glowy hug thing but Ray doesn’t know that just yet.

What he does know is that Julie’s mental health took a rapid turn for the better for seemingly no reason and then a couple weeks later he found out she joined a band without telling him.

He’s not stupid. He knows that’s probably because of the band, though he is a bit confused as to how she even met them.

He kinda figures it’s a kids and your internet tricks thing but there’s some flaws to this theory.

1) He asks Flynn what she knows about the boys only... it seems like she doesn’t know much of anything. That’s weird because he knows Julie tells her practically everything.

2) The boys have American accents despite Julie claiming they’re from Sweden.

3) Carlos is a terrible liar and on the rare occasion Julie actually talks about the boys he gets this weirdly conspiratorial look.

So anyway Ray doesn’t really believe it’s as simple as ‘I met these 3 Swedish boys on the internet’ but he trusts his daughter’s judgement and he leaves it alone.

Anyway he has other things to focus on.

Such as how Ray has literally never been able to keep track of his keys/phone/hats/camera parts/stuff and now it seems to just pop up whenever he’s looking for it.

Also he keeps feeling like there’s someone with him around the house more and more.

Like not a malicious presence like Victoria fears, and definitely not like Rose is around watching him, but like someone is there.

Sometimes it feels like there’s more than one presence around. None of them familiar but all of them friendly.

Oddly enough, whatever or whoever it is feels almost like Julie or Carlos. Young and excitable and like a verse of a happy song. He’s not sure why they’re around, but they definitely don’t feel dangerous, so Ray doesn’t feel threatened.

But some days a better comparison might be to Trevor back when Rose first introduced him. Raw and fragile and very, very sad.

Ray tries to put on happy music or a Disney cartoon or something on those days and he doesn’t quite know why or how but the energy usually gets more positive when he does that.

Anyway after a while of this (after the Orpheum performance) he starts noticing weird things that Carlos and Julie do now.

Carlos will just carry around a small whiteboard and a couple pens and he erases it whenever Ray comes into the room but before he does it almost looks like there’s two, three, or even four sets of handwriting on there.

And he walks in on Julie talking to herself like. All the time.

Carlos doesn’t ask for help on his math homework anymore. Julie makes this insanely good chicken recipe for dinner once and then clearly panics and lies when asked where she got it. Flynn makes a set of rainbow friendship bracelets one day while she’s hanging out at the Molina house but he doesn’t see Julie wearing the match to the one she keeps.

Plus Carrie starts hanging out at their house again?? Out of the blue?? And none of the girls have a good explanation for how they made up??

Then later Nick Danforth-Evans (who Julie used to talk about having a crush on but hasn’t in a while) starts hanging around too and the kid seems... well, Ray doesn’t want to throw the word ‘traumatized’ around, but he’s jumpy and guarded in a way that can only be described as a little bit traumatized.

So all 5 kids are clearly keeping some secret and Ray’s getting suspicious and worried.

He sits them down and asks what’s going on. Like is one of them having problems at home, or..?

The kids, simultaneously:

Julie: no, we’re just all in a play together!

Carlos: we’re fine we’re just ghost hunting!

Flynn: we’re exhibiting bisexual-pansexual-lesbian solidarity!

Carrie: Julie and the Phantoms and Dirty Candi are doing a collaboration album!

Nick: we all joined jazz band??

Ray’s calling bullshit at this point.

Then Julie and Nick both look up directly at the same spot, somewhere a couple feet above the arm of the couch, which is seemingly just empty air.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem like the other kids can see it but they all seem to be waiting for something and Ray is wondering if they’re sharing a hallucination??? Are they all on drugs??? Should he be worried???

Then Julie says to meet them in the studio in 30 minutes. Flynn, Carrie, and Nick go home to give the Molina family some alone time.

*cue music performance where Ray is introduced to the boys*

So anyway Julie and Carlos (with the help of the ghosts whenever one of them has something to say and grabs Julie’s hand) give him a clearly-sugarcoated version of the last few months.

Ghosts of Trevor’s dead bandmates help Julie reconnect with music, they form a band, they meet another ghost, other ghost accidentally gets them involved with evil magician ghost, Nick got possessed, Carrie figured it out and helped plot to get him un-possessed, evil magician ghost is still out there and they’re sticking together so he can’t get any of them in the future.

Despite how they say it like it’s no big deal, Ray now understands why the kids have been acting so weird because all these things sound scary and painful.

Also the more he thinks about it, the more he worries about the fact that he has three 17-year-old boys sleeping in his garage who died terribly of food poisoning.

They are children and they died incredibly painfully and then almost got enslaved and/or erased from existence.

Then one day Ray’s feeling one of those presences around the house again and he realizes it’s probably one of Julie’s ghost boys.

Ray: who’s there?

Whoever it is freaks out and leaves, and Ray takes notes for next time.

The next time he feels someone in the room, he has a notepad ready and he writes down “Luke, Alex, or Reggie?” from what he remembers from Julie’s introductions.

Immediately, there’s a spike of anxiety in the room.

Ray: it’s okay. You can stay and we don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I’d like to know who it is I’m not talking to though.

There’s a few seconds of hesitation, and then the pen picks itself up and the name “Reggie” gets circled.

Ray: the bassist with the flannels, right?

Yeah, written in a teenage boy’s messy scrawl.

Ray: okay, do you want to watch a movie?

More hesitation, and Ray’s not sure what that’s about but he’s starting to suspect with the amount of fear still in the room, and there’s a good 20 seconds where Reggie doesn’t respond before I don’t know.

Ray: Moana or Tangled? Moana.

After that, he takes a page out of Carlos’s book and gets a small whiteboard with 3 pens that stick to it magnetically. Red for Reggie, blue for Luke, and pink for Alex.

Reggie has written conversations with him most, but Luke does sometimes too and Alex does least often but he’ll still request a movie occasionally.

All of them are wary around him and Ray doesn’t quite know what to do to earn their trust. But he asks questions about their preferences on things. He says they did good on their latest show. He remembers which movies are their favorites and introduces them to music he thinks are their styles.

Luke is a big fan of Fall Out Boy and Reggie fucking loves Taylor Swift.

Alex is less consistent but occasionally Ray will play a song and he’ll write something like This is a cool song.

He starts to be able to tell which energy is which even before they write who it is right around the time the boys start to be visible for longer and longer after playing.

They play a really good show and stay visible for like 2 full days and that’s the first (but not the last) time Ray really gets to get to know them.

He starts noticing after really good shows like that one how even more now that they can be seen, they’re all a little... off from how Nick and Carrie and Flynn act around him.

With Luke it’s mostly because he’s trying so hard to impress because *gasp* he and Julie are a thing but there’s still a little bit of tension that seems like it comes from something deeper than just being nervous around his girlfriend’s dad.

With Reggie it’s subtle caution. Like he’s happy to be hanging out with Ray but he’s constantly ready for something to go wrong. There’s a catch in his smile, a hesitation before he states an opinion, a practiced carefulness where he changes the subject at any sign of even mild frustration.

But with Alex... it’s mostly just avoidance. Like if he poofs in while visible and it just so happens that no one else is there, he’ll find an excuse to leave.

And Ray lets him, of course. He doesn’t want the kid to feel trapped. But all of the boys’ behavior bothers him.

On the rare occasion they spend more than 2 seconds together Alex is really quiet. He won’t admit if Ray guessed wrong about a song and he doesn’t like it even though his body language makes it clear he’s not vibing with it. Actually, his body language pretty much just spells I am very uncomfortable in every situation where Julie or Carlos went to the bathroom or someone went to grab a snack and they’re alone even for 5 minutes while he’s visible.

Ray’s not stupid. He knows three 17-year-olds don’t end up getting their instruments left to their only living bandmate’s new best friend’s family by having good relationships with their own families.

He doesn’t exactly want to bring it up, but he kind of knows.

Then one day he’s sitting with all 3 boys watching a movie while he fixes something on his camera and Julie and Carlos are at school and he messes up a little part that means he has to start over (don’t @ me I know nothing about cameras) and swears out of frustration louder than he meant to.

He reaches for the screwdriver on the coffee table and

And Reggie and Alex both flinch.

Ray hadn’t even noticed they were tracking his movements, but while Luke seems to just have moved his focus from the TV to his friends in concern, Alex and Reggie both look too tense to play it off.

He figures its as good a time as any to have a chat cause these boys aren’t his sons but they don’t have anyone else acting as a parent figure to them and he feels the need to take care of them. He pauses the movie.

Ray: Can we have a talk? About you boy’s families?

Naturally Luke jumps in to try to distract him immediately, telling a story about his dad taking him fishing once, but he stops when Ray asks him to stop.

Ray: That’s not what I’m talking about and I think you all know it.

The boys are all still silent. Luke looks 500% ready to deflect again. Reggie and Alex look more like they’re expecting to get yelled at or worse.

Ray: I just want to help. I’ll drop it if you want me to but I want you to know that I would never do something to hurt any of you intentionally. You can talk to me about anything if you need to.

He means to make it an option of ‘you can talk but you don’t have to if you don’t want to,’ but the boys clearly don’t take it as such with how Luke starts talking immediately.

Luke: I ran away when I was 17. My mom and dad didn’t want me to stay in Sunset Curve, I think they thought it was going to get me into drugs or something.

They have a short talk about parents having good intentions not equalling them being right to push Luke so hard they pushed him away and it’s okay to feel hurt by that and then press play on the movie again and Ray thinks he sees all 3 boys relax somewhat during that.

A couple weeks later Reggie comes in visible and hesitantly asks about watching this series he saw when Carlos was scrolling through Netflix once.

Mid-episode he blurts out

Reggie: I don’t want to look for my parents and I feel weird about that.

He rambles for a while about knowing he was lucky that his family had money and his mom and dad told him they loved him and stuff but also he remembers so many fights between them where he felt caught in the middle and it never ended well if he chose a side but there was no way to win because they’d both turn on him if he didn’t so it was just this constant balancing act to try to prevent fights in the first place.

Reggie: I felt like I was walking on a tightrope. Like, all the time. I tried so hard to keep them from getting mad at each other or at me. Only it never worked and it was always a question of when they were going to snap next and it was confusing cause one day we’d go to the zoo and everything would be fine and the next they’d yell at me and send me to bed without food.

He feels guilty for not wanting to put in the effort to find them because he’s pretty sure on some level they did love him but he doesn’t want to see them again.

And he doesn’t want to know if they even miss him at all because when he got older and the fighting got too intense he would sneak off to Luke’s or Bobby’s and no matter if he stayed away for an hour or a couple days they never seemed to notice he was gone.

Ray listens and a lot of things about Reggie start to make sense. How he’s so careful not to catch him in a bad mood. How he shuts down whenever anyone raises their voice. How he helps out so much in an effort to stay on Ray’s good side.

It’s a day and a half after the latest show so they can’t really hug but Ray does what he can to provide comfort and validate his feelings anyway because damn Reggie is a good kid and he didn’t deserve that.

Reggie and Luke get more comfortable with coming to him for meaningful chats, or even just to vent about whatever’s going on lately.

Eventually they seem to feel almost as comfortable with him as Julie and Carlos do so it kinda becomes a routine.

Like Julie will ask for cuddles when she’s sad about missing Rose or she’ll walk in and vent about Carrie and Flynn being so obvious about liking each other but somehow not realizing it’s mutual and she and Nick are 3rd wheeling and going insane.

Carlos will excitedly ramble about his latest baseball practice shenanigans for an hour but also sometimes ask for someone to watch old home movies or listen to old CDs from Rose and the Petal Pushers with him.

And that’s normal. That’s been Ray’s life since his kids started talking. But the thing is that it’s just as normal when

When Luke tells how he’s still angry about his music getting stolen because it feels like a part of him was taken away and he worked hard on those songs. Also one day he very shyly admits

Luke: I like Julie a lot.

Ray: I know, kiddo.

Luke: You’re not mad?

Ray: As long as you two make each other happy, no. I’m happy for you.

And it’s just as normal when Reggie talks about missing his little cousin Kelsi and wondering where she ended up only for them to look her up and find out she’s a major Broadway writer/director now oh my god— and also

Reggie: I think I like boys. Like boys are cute. But I know I’m not gay because girls are cute too and ugh it’s confusing it’s probably nothing I guess everybody goes through this.

Ray: Have you ever thought you might be bisexual?

Reggie: Bi-what-now?

Ray, already digging out his old flannels that he would have passed down to Julie except they’re too big for her: It’s okay to like both, kiddo.

All this is great of course. It’s great how Reggie and Luke aren’t afraid anymore and they feel validated and seen and listened to.

But months have passed and Ray notices how Alex remains separate. He still avoids Ray when he can and stays quiet and cautious when he can’t.

Like Ray still senses Alex around him sometimes but never right after a show when he’s visible. He doesn’t come to him with problems. He’ll stay and listen when Ray plays a song he thinks he’d like, but he still seems so cautious and Ray doesn’t know how to help.

He asks Luke one day while he’s introducing him to a Wicked bootleg if he’s done something specific to scare Alex away.

Luke gets this really dark look on his face and he just

Luke: Let’s just say that my parents didn’t do everything perfectly, but they’re saints compared to Alex’s.

Ray decides to drop it, but Luke wants to reassure him.

Luke: You haven’t done anything wrong. He’s just not very comfortable around most adults in general. It’s one thing when we’re invisible, but...

Ray: I just wish I could help.

Luke: You do help. But it took a while for Alex to trust me.

The conversation ends there because Luke starts getting really into Defying Gravity.

But then that night Julie comes in with a kind of out of character movie request so Ray thinks Luke talked to her.

Because Julie does not like most romcoms that aren’t musicals. She gets bored. But she requests Love, Simon anyway.

Ray kind of sees what she’s trying to do there because now that he’s thinking about it the boys haven’t really seen many things with queer rep. Especially not queer main characters.

And nobody’s really told him that Alex is gay but cmon he’s an elder bi. He has accurate gaydar so he can support his queer ducklings.

Despite how the boys all know being gay is more socially acceptable now (they found out about Nick’s dads and the girls gave them the ‘gay marriage is legal now’ talk) they still seem kind of baffled by how there’s an entire romcom centered around a gay boy and it did well.

From there Ray tries to find more movies and tv shows with canon queer representation.

And he keeps giving Alex space but also trying his best to show him that he’s not like his parents.

For a long time nothing changes beyond Luke and Reggie getting increasingly comfortable with him.

Well that’s not completely true actually cause Reggie starts tagging along to photo shoots and becomes Ray’s unofficial mostly invisible assistant.

Then the band plays an amazing show and the boys stay visible for a full week.

Around the middle of that week, Ray goes out to the garage to find Reggie and see if he wants to come on a photo shoot.

Reggie isn’t out there but Alex is.

And he’s crying. Hard.

He looks like he’s going to poof out when he sees Ray there but Ray’s already 100% ready to do exactly what he always does when he walks in on Julie or Carlos crying.

Ray: Alex. Hey, buddy, it’s okay. I’m here. It’s going to be okay.

Alex freezes and it breaks Ray’s heart how that kind of concern is clearly not what he’s expecting.

Ray: Are you okay with being touched?

Alex looks kind of like he’s in shock but he nods.

He clearly doesn’t really know what to do with it but he kind of melts into it when Ray hugs him and he just sobs on his shoulder.

When he’s stopped crying enough he starts rambling about how he’s been looking everywhere but he can’t find Willie.

At that point he’s basically having a panic attack so finding out what’s wrong takes a backseat compared to calming him down and Ray knows how to do that because he and Rose used to do that for Trevor all the time.

Ray: Alex, breathe. In for 4 counts, hold for 7, out for 8. Breathe with me.

It takes a couple minutes until Alex has calmed down enough, but once he does, Ray asks what’s wrong and what’s happening with Willie.

He only vaguely knows who Willie is from what he’s been told by the other kids but he knows he’s important to Alex.

So Alex takes a deep breath and explains that Caleb confronted him and basically said the boys had to join his house band or he would make sure he’d never see Willie again. And he doesn’t want to ask his family to sacrifice themselves for him but he doesn’t want to lose the boy he loves either.

Ray wants to throw hands but from what the kids have told him about Caleb, he has a better idea.

Ray: Here’s what we’re gonna do, buddy. Reggie said Caleb has this super catchy number, The Other Side of Hollywood?

Alex: Yeah?

Ray: How quickly do you think Luke and Julie could come up with an arrangement for you four to cover that and how desperate do you think Covington would be to make sure a video of that never gets published without crediting him?

Alex: :o

Spoiler alert: Julie and Luke, in collaboration with Carrie, can come up with an arrangement very quickly.

They do a private performance of it and film it and basically blackmail Caleb into letting Willie go.

Willie has an empty house that used to be his parents’ that he still considers his so he mostly crashes there if he needs to. Also he loves skating around so much that he never stays in one place for very long.

Julie can see him but she can’t make him visible so it’s a little odd but Ray gets an orange pen for him for the whiteboard and he finds skateboarding videos and stuff for when he visits.

They eventually figure out that he can be part of the magic by adding him to the band so they give him a tambourine and yay now Willie can be seen but that’s later.

The biggest immediate change to come out of all this is Alex.

He’s not afraid of Ray anymore for the most part (healing isn’t linear and he can’t help a few bad days) and he starts actually talking to him. Not about serious stuff but he’s talking. Mostly just rambling about how Willie makes him feel or how Luke and Reggie have been being annoying lately.

Then one day he comes in really nervous and says something about Reggie saying he talked to Ray about his parents.

And Ray confirms it and asks if there’s anything Alex needs to tell him.

Alex sits down and clearly he’s been holding this in for a long time and he just unloads how he came out to his parents because his youngest sister found his diary and he was scared she’d tell them. They didn’t react well and when he cried out of fear and frustration his father... gave him something to cry about.

His father did that a few more times, trying to ‘make him man up,’ and Alex never told his bandmates but he always knew they could see the bruises and that was why Bobby made it so clear his garage was open and his house was a safe place to run.

But Alex didn’t no matter how bad things got because he guessed some small part of him thought he deserved it but mostly it was about how his oldest sister dropped out of college and ghosted the family and Alex was the next-oldest so he felt responsible for protecting his younger sisters even if they both had learned behaviors from their parents and hated him.

Then that summer he found out his parents were planning on sending him away to some Christian camp where they’d ‘fix’ him.

Alex made it clear that he wouldn’t go and if they tried to make him he’d run away, but their ultimatum was that he couldn’t live under their roof if he was gay.

So he didn’t. And it was a situation somewhere between getting kicked out and running away, but he packed a bag and never went back.

He ran to Bobby’s house, he wrote a whole bunch of angry songs, and he tried not to think too much about how he understood why his older sister left and how he was doing the exact same thing to his younger sisters.

By the time he’s done explaining everything Ray’s trying not to cry but Alex is definitely already crying mostly out of anger.

Alex: I hated them all. I hated Molly for leaving me and I hated my mom for turning my little sisters against me and I hated my dad for hurting me and I even hated Anna and Josie for not standing by me and I just hated them all so much. I still do. And it is so stupid that I feel guilty for that because they were terrible to me and I was 16 and I didn’t deserve that but I do feel guilty for it because they’re my family and I hate them.

Ray doesn’t have much to say because damn this is heavy stuff but he assures him that after what he went through he has a right to hate his blood family.

Alex tells him awkwardly when he’s calmed down a bit that Luke is the only other person he’s ever told about all this, because after he ran away they dated for a few months before figuring out that they were better as friends.

Reggie and Bobby guessed parts of it and Julie probably has too but none of them have asked and Alex thinks he might tell Reggie and Julie someday if it ever comes up but he never did end up telling Bobby.

Ray assures him that he won’t tell anyone and also that he would never do that. He would never do anything to hurt Alex or the others on purpose.

He makes a silent promise that no one will ever hurt one of his kids like that again and if Caleb or anyone else ever tries, they will regret it.

But anyway on to happier matters.

Willie visits a lot and he’s a little skittish around Ray but he loosens up after he jokingly mentions one time that Willie and Alex are like the beginning of the Sk8ter Boy song.

Alex and Ray might be Denim Jacket Buddies but once Ray digs his old leather jacket out of the closet he becomes Leather Jacket Buddies with Reggie.

You’d think he has to tell Carlos and Reggie off the most for breaking things but he doesn’t. It’s Carlos and Luke.

Also Ray doesn’t consider himself an overprotective dad but Julie and Luke are not allowed to be alone in a room with the door closed.

Neither are Alex and Willie technically but it’s harder to enforce it when they’re both ghosts.

Lmao all the kids follow the rules anyway because they love Ray and he’s not being unreasonable.

He helps Julie in her plot to get Carrie and Flynn together and also he helps Nick plan how to make a move on that cute boy on his lacrosse team.

Because Nick loves his dads but they’re disaster gays. Neither of those men can properly flirt. They fell in love because of a baseball rivalry and Nick doesn’t trust their advice.

Pride month rolls around and Julie makes sure to book a big gig the day before the parade so the boys will be visible and tangible.

Trevor’s on tour and can’t get away and Flynn’s parents are working and Nick’s are busy too so Ray finds himself escorting this whole little gaggle of various queer ducklings to pride.

Carlos isn’t quite sure what he is yet so he’s just got a rainbow flag painted on his cheek and a shirt that says I love my bi sister on it.

Julie’s all decked out in the bi colors, complete with ribbons braided into her hair and a flag to use as a cape. She made the tutu herself and it took her hours but it turned out really good.

Luke’s got a tank top with the pan colors and a trans flag as a cape and also yknow face paint of course.

Reggie browsed thrift shops everywhere until he found a flannel in the bi colors and he’s got that along with pink purple and blue laces in his combat boots and what Ray is really hoping is temporary dye and not spray paint in his hair.

Alex has a rainbow shirt that matches Willie’s and matching bracelets with Flynn. Also he painted rainbow hearts on his cheeks and put a lot of effort into them and they look really symmetrical.

Willie’s of course matching shirts with Alex and also he has sparkly rainbow socks and a flag to use as a cape.

Carrie’s got a whole ensemble in the lesbian colors complete with a pride wig and also matching necklaces with Flynn.

Flynn’s matching colors with Carrie but more in her style with of course matching jewelry with the people closest to her. She’s got friendship bracelets corresponding to Alex and Julie.

Nick’s got a pan tshirt and a fedora with a ribbon in pink yellow and blue plus face paint cause all of them have face paint. Nothing too crazy.

Meanwhile Ray’s got a bi bandanna and one of those shirts that’s like Free Dad Hugs.

Plus everyone did each other’s nails with varying degrees of success the night before and Julie did Ray’s so they turned out good.

Nick’s lacrosse buddies and the rest of Dirty Candi are around somewhere but they didn’t ride in the same car so they’re not that relevant.

They party. Celebrate being alive. Idk I’ve never gotten to go to pride.

And afterwards they all go back to the Molina house and the couch isn’t really big enough for all of them but it’s okay it’s not like they know how to sit correctly anyway.

They all kind of pile together and cuddle and watch movies until Flynn and Nick’s parents can come pick them up.

And Ray just looks around and realizes that

Sure only 2 of them are his biologically

And 3 of the others have good parent(s) who are actively a part of their lives

The remaining 4 are technically dead

But he has 9 children and he’s totally fine with that.

Cause he’s Ray Molina: best dad ever.

Victoria’s head is going to explode when she finds out that not only is the Molina house really haunted, but he’s adopted the ghosts.

[arthurjdrake]

Timing: Before the full moon. Parties: Arthur & @chasseurdeloup​ Summary: A missing child with a surprising connection and a creature in search of retribution makes for uneasy allies.  Warnings: Injury Detail, Blood, Kidnapping

For the most part, Arthur let his descendents live their lives in uninterrupted peace. He didn’t like to step in and potentially complicate things, but sometimes distancing yourself from things was easier said than done. So, on occasion, he would become a family friend - or some other connection distant enough to maintain contact whilst also keeping an eye on how they fared through the years. A safeguard of sorts. The Cranes had lived in and around Maine from the time he and Louise had settled there and started their family together in the 1700s. It had been a peaceful life, that is until tragedy struck swift and sudden - tearing a family asunder in the grief that followed. They had lost Abby, and in the obsession that followed, Arthur had lost his remaining family to his own blindsightedness.

To say that he was shocked to see the spitting image of his own little girl skipping rope with friends at break would be… An understatement. It had taken several moments for him to regather his wits, that and hearing the teacher calling Katherine Crane to come inside. Katherine. Not Abigail. Not his darling Abby. But a Crane nonetheless… So there was a connection. A little affiliate research on the sides of the main case confirmed this. All the while the mysterious case continued to lead to nothing but twist after twist. Their quarry somehow evading them at every turn.

It was early evening, his usual walk home from the campus a few weeks after that particular discovery when it happened, a voice crying out into the chill evening air.

“Kat?! Kat!!” The tone was panicked, fearful - cutting through the quiet evening air and making his blood freeze in its veins. “She’s not in her room, she’s gone! Oh my god Aeden! Call the police… Call someone.” The door clattered open, and a woman in her forties appeared, face tear-stained and stricken “Kat!!”

Arthur hadn’t been able to stop himself, the cries stirring a bone-deep urge to help. No matter what. He fudged the truth a little, using his connection with Javier and affiliate liaison paperwork he kept in his bag to offer aid and gain entry to the scene before anyone else could arrive. The window sat wide open, a smear dirt staining the pristine windowsill of the little girl’s bedroom and a few crumpled leaves from a tree he’d seen a few times on his walks back home in the evenings. “Tell the police everything when they get here, I promise you Mrs Crane… I’ll find your daughter. No matter what.”

He wouldn’t fail. Not this time. With a promise made, Arthur swept into the falling night swallowing down the rising wave of nausea and deja vu. He wouldn’t fail this time. Not again.

Hunting was the only thing that made sense in Kaden’s world. At least it used to. Increasingly it was getting more and more complicated. But tracking a Camazotz didn’t pose any moral questions or obligations or any bullshit as far as he could tell. As soon as he heard a report about a “giant freaking bat” spotted on the edge of the woods, he was out the door and on the trail.

There wasn’t a whole lot to go on. Some branches down in the trees that easily could have been from giant wings. Blood spots lining the ground. Trampled brush in a few places. It wasn’t much, but it was enough for Kaden to get started. Weapons on his back and more at his side, he started trekking into the forest to hunt and kill a monster to help protect the people of White Crest; the thing he was born and bred to do. It was so hard to remember that lately. A good kill would set him straight, realign his priorities. Help him figure out “his own code” as Theo put it.

Crouched down, looking for the next trace of the beast, listening deeply for any unusual sounds, Kaden jumped when he heard the call come in. Shit, forgot he had his radio turned on. Still, he listened. Missing girl, strange tracks, signs of a body being dragged. Sure, it could have easily been a typical kidnapping case but from the sound of it, something was off. Just off enough to suspect supernatural foul play. Especially given what he was tracking. Maybe these were separate incidents but it wasn't unheard of for the giant bat monsters to drag a human off with them, especially a child. Putain, he could be too late. He should pick up his pace.

Kaden had every reason to believe he was alone in the woods, especially this far. So the sound of footsteps wasn’t exactly comforting. Cautiously, he headed towards the sound, keeping note of the direction he strayed from his trail. He saw a man a little ways off, determined and seemingly singular minded in whatever the hell mission he was on. A death march, maybe. In these woods, at least. Once he got a little closer, Kaden realized he recognized the face. “Arthur?” he called out. What the hell was a professor doing here? Now? “Hey, you shouldn’t be out here. It’s not safe.”

Without more information, Arthur knew he had to prepare for a worst case scenario. Whatever he’d been following with Javier seemed to have some kind of vampiric inclination and while this wasn’t the creature’s typical MO it couldn’t just be coincidence that someone he was related to had been chosen at a similar timeframe as the other attacks. Plus the disappearance of the detective, without word or warning? Something strange was up there. Or perhaps it was just that. A really, really bad coincidence and Arthur was wading into something he really wasn’t prepared for. But when it came to family, regardless how distant you did whatever it took to save them.

Didn’t you?

There was no time to waste, but it would be suicide to go after whatever had taken Katherine from her bedroom without some form of equipment. After the mime, it had been a process of starting to collect the necessary tools to keep his home defended from any further incursions. Mainly a stockpile of stakes, holy water, a bow slung across one shoulder, his ancient cold iron handaxe that had been cared for across the centuries would deal with ghosts and fae alike. Grabbing the necessary things for whatever might go down tonight he left for the woods with all the speed in the world. All in all feeling as comfortable as anyone could do wading into the woods in the pitch dark of night after an unknown monstrosity that could almost certainly kill you and drain your internal organs without visible laceration. In hindsight, he should’ve called Freyja or someone, let them know what a ridiculous thing he was planning. But rational thought had fled his mind the moment he’d found out she’d been taken and in a way, he didn’t want Frey to know. She’d seen the disaster he’d become after Abigail and if this went wrong, there was no telling how he’d be able to face her again and say he’d willingly run headlong into this situation.

It was Abigail all over again, and Arthur could feel the lump of his heart in his throat at the mere thought of what had happened to his precious girl all those years before. An ancient tragedy, and not a tale he wished to see retold tonight.

What he wasn’t accounting for, as he followed the path of broken overhead branches further towards the Outskirts, was another person to be out here as well. Let alone Kaden. Of all the hunters… How had he ended up with this incompetent pie spying buffoon… He cut his thoughts off there as Kaden told him it wasn’t safe out here and a dark look crossed his typically amicable features, “no shit it’s not safe, a kid got taken by a fucking monster.”

Arthur was about the last person Kaden had intended to see out there. What he’d expected even less was his reaction. Was he still fucking marching on like he intended to be out here? Putain. What in the hell? Wasn’t he meant to be smart? “Hey!” he called out and reached for his shoulder, trying to stop him, to distract him from whatever singularity he was headed towards. It didn’t work. It was clear his mind was elsewhere, determined. Not an excuse for heading straight into danger. Then again, he saw the man had weapons on him. Alright, then. Didn’t strike him as a hunter and he’d never seen in him any capacity like that before in the few months he’d been here but appearances could be deceiving.

“I know that. I’m police. How do you know that?” He followed on the other man’s heels, hoping to get in front of his path, force him to stop. But only one of them seemed confused right now and it wasn’t the professor. “I got the call. Whatev--” Fuck. Did he know about the supernatural? Didn’t matter. “Whoever it is, whatever it is, it’s dangerous. What the hell are you going to do about it?” Another quick look up and down the man, at his weapons. They didn’t seem to live there attached to him the way Kaden’s did. Kaden’s holsters and sheaths were well worn, at home at his side and on his back. There was one exception of Arthur’s. An axe that looked anything but modern. His brow furrowed, staring at it a moment, before realizing he’d fallen behind. Kaden ran and put himself in front of Arthur and his path. “Go home. I don’t need you getting in the way of my hu--” Right. Not hunt. This was “police” work. “My assignment. This isn’t your call. You’re a civilian. Go home. I’ve got it.”

Thinking straight was not something Arthur was presently doing. Too many memories and thoughts swirled around in his mind, clouding his judgement and reasoning when it came to what he was about to do. But wasting time would hardly do. A little girl had been taken and if his past experience with the WCPD was anything to go by, she’d be dead by the time they ever got wind of where she might’ve been taken and it wasn’t as if they could deal with this… Perhaps a hunter… But then who did he know in town other than Adam? And he sure as heck wasn’t putting a kid in the line of fire… And to find another one would take more time than it he had to spare. So here he was, traipsing through the forest in search of whatever had taken Katherine and he suspected might’ve taken Javier too.

“You’re animal control,” that hardly qualified him as police in Arthur’s mind. Two separate divisions, associated yes but still distinctly different. Though he left the question of how he knew what was going on unanswered. It wasn’t worth wasting the breath right now. “Yeah, it is” his typically amicable tone was short and decisive, “so either you come with and help me get that kid back from it because I’m going after it regardless… I’ve been helping to track this thing for months now.” And what had come of it? The detective missing and now one of his descendents taken in the middle of the night… The wicked blade gripped in his hand glinted as he turned to give Kaden a long, searching look for but a moment as he continued to walk leaving Kaden to catch up. “Stop telling me what to do hunter,” proof enough that Arthur wasn’t going to pander around the bushes tonight “every moment you waste trying to tell me to do something we both know isn’t going to happen, the greater chance that thing is going to eat that girl.”

“So quit with the officer act, I’m not going home and two pairs of hands are better than one in these sorts of things.” As Kaden called him a civilian he huffed, wanting to bite back with something smart but instead he kept silent and carried on, hefting the familiar blade in his hand. “What weapons do you have?”

“Badge still says WCPD,” he said. “Remind me what the hell your badge says. That’s right. You don’t have one.” Sure, Kaden had sort of gotten a fast track through the academy, mostly due to the fact he was pretty sure they didn’t expect him to last longer than a month at best. And it wasn’t even that he particularly cared that much on a regular day but right now he was sticking to his guns. Including the one administered to him sitting in his truck.

Kaden stopped dead in his tracks at the word hunter. Hunter? He knew? Who told him? Did Nadia tell him? Blanche maybe? How the fuck did he kn-- Alright, sure, Kaden was out in the woods with a fucking areanel of weapons strapped to him but that wasn’t much different from how Arthur was looking right now. “I’m not a--” He bit his tongue. Couldn’t finish that lie, it was too much. “Alright let’s say I am a hunter. You’re sure as shit not. Why can’t you just leave it to someone capable of fighting whatever’s out there. I’d really like it if no one died today. Including you.” There was no doubt that Kaden’s words meant little to the professor. There were few times Kaden had seen this kind of sheer determination on someone’s face. Desperation mixed with vengeance and stubbornness. A fair few hunters had shown it going after a mark that had taken something or someone from them. He was pretty aware there was no stopping it. Didn’t mean he wasn’t going to point out how fucking stupid this was. “Fine. But if your sets of hands gets you or me killed I swear.” Shitty threat, but it was all he had. Not like he could kill a human, anyway. He really should have suspected that Arthur knew about the supernatural. He’d mentioned fae and knew to take weapons to the woods. Still, he fucking hated this idea

“I’ve got knives, pistol, shotgun. I’m sure you didn’t miss that one,” he answered as he reluctantly followed the other man on their joint death march. “Iron and holy water just in case. And a stake. But I was tracking a camazotz. Giant bat,” he clarified just in case. “I was already tracking it when I heard the call. I assumed it was connected. But if you know so much, tell me what we’re looking for and I’ll tell you what I’ve got.”

They walked a little longer, following whatever trail he seemed to be following. “So who the hell is she to you?” he asked. Had to be important if he was this fucking determined.

“Animal control, doesn’t make you police but it’s a good cover, considering...” Arthur gave Kaden another quick look, eyeing the things attached to his belt and back. No further remarks were made, however, you had to pick the battles you fought in and that wasn’t a debate he truly wanted to get into right now.

Seeing how Kaden seemed to stop dead, Arthur fought back the urge to heave a put upon sigh. “Look mate, your entire thing screams hunter, you’re in the woods late at night, you have christ knows how many stakes, probably some silver bullets judging by those guns. No point beating about the bush.” Would it keep Kaden up to pace? “Capable?” oh the things he wanted to say to that. “I’ll be fine, I’ve dealt with worse situations than this one, Plus, I’d hate to think I let you go out there to your death without helping.” He’d manage. He always had. Time and time again. Plus, it wasn’t as if he were ill equipped for handling… life or death situations. “This thing’s murdered eight maybe nine people already, it’s bloody fucking smart and so it’s evaded every effort to catch, track or murder it. It’s going to need more than one person to kill it.” That wasn’t desperation talking, it was pure logic. The threat was met with a deadpan look, “is that seriously what you’re going to try and level with me at? You need to get better insults, Kaden.”

As Kaden listed off the weaponry he had, Arthur ran a mental list. “Alright. Then between use we should have enough to deal with this thing.” He hefted the blade, the wicked edge catching the moonlight illuminating ancient looking runic patterning carved into the head while he explained, “cold iron and doused in holy water, just in case… Taking the head off most things tends to do the trick.”

He frowned a little at the mention of a camazotz, huh, so that was what they’d be tracking was it? “Can’t say I’ve had many encounters with them… Admittedly, I’m not sure what it was specifically but it’s been loose for several months. Detective Javier - federal agent dude? I was helping on his case until… well.” He made a face, and since Kaden worked at the police office he already no doubt knew of the federal agent’s disappearance. “Out of curiosity, what do they feed on?”

Arthur eyed the branches above, mindful of his foot placing to keep his tread soft. “A-- close family friend.” It wasn’t exactly a lie, though not the straight truth either and he wasn’t planning to elaborate on it any more than that. They walked for a little while longer, but Arthur couldn’t help one question he’d been pondering, “so how does a hunter end up dating a fae?” his tone lacked judgement, in fact, it was plain curiosity that coloured his words.

“Considering I can be transferred to a standard cop at any time I think it fucking does. Any cover is just a convenience.” Kaden was hardly the first hunter to find cover within a police department. He was sure he wouldn’t be the last. Hell, he’d seen a handful of officers at the Silver Bullet once or twice now. Not that any of it fucking mattered at the moment. “I don’t know you’re who’d I’d fucking have picked to help but fine. You want to come with me? Let’s go hunt a fucking monster. And try not to make it ten plus deaths on its hit count.” Still fucking hated this idea.

“Correct,” he said, eying the axe once more. “And if we run into one of the exceptions, we probably didn’t have a shot anyway.” Not a very comforting thought, but it was true all the same. “But you’re right, beheading normally works.” His stomach dropped thinking of Bea. Fuck. Not right now. Not the time.

“Javier?” Kaden realized how long it had been since he’d seen the agent. “I thought he left town. I mean I didn’t hear anything.” Or rather, he hadn’t noticed. Shit. “Anyway, camazotz feed on blood and dead animals, but they’re highly aggressive. Wouldn’t hesitate to hunt or carry a child away.” Hopefully that’s all it did. And the girl in question was still alive.

“Must be real close for all this trouble.” Kaden couldn’t say what it was, but something about the other man’s words struck him as a lie. Or a bend in the truth. Possibly just a stretch. Or a cover. Who knew. He wasn't sure it mattered. If he wanted to risk his life for nothing more than a family friend, that was his business.

“Because she wasn’t fae when we first started dating,” he said, trying not to let too much bite seep into his words. “I mean, she was. But she wasn’t, I don’t know, triggered yet or whatever they call it. She seemed human. In a lot of senses she was.” Kaden tried not to linger on how it was with Regan before her father died. Her warm skin, her racing pulse, no wings, no shattered glass, no throbbing eardrums. It hurt just a little bit every time he remembered, worse knowing how desperately she wanted to go back to being almost human. He couldn’t let himself want that. It was bad enough if one of them didn’t accept it, let alone both. It couldn’t be undone. The period for mourning that was past. At least for him.

There weren’t too many clues to follow on the way there. The forest was relatively quiet, but there were enough broken branches and a few deep scuffs and scrapes in the earth that looked like dragging that they were able to follow and pick through. After a while, Kaden stopped and put his arm out to stop Arthur, putting his finger to his lips. There was a sound. Something wholly inhuman. Hard to identify. Almost like a… “There’s a ticking sound, do you hear it?” he whispered. His brow furrowed. It didn’t sound like a camazotz. But he couldn’t say what it was, either.

No response was offered, antagonising Kaden and getting the other man’s heckles up wouldn’t be beneficial right now. So Arthur opted to keep his peace and mind his own for now. The fact Kaden seemed to give up on insisting he go away and leave this down to him was a step in the right direction.

“No probably not,” he agreed to the notion of them not having a chance if it was something they hadn’t come across. But at least they could give it their best shot… and well, Arthur could only hope that maybe he’d come back from this one. Though it wouldn’t be the first close call to go completely sideways. As they moved deeper into the woods the heavy scent of detritus and composting earth grew stronger, it was strangely comforting. Terrain he’d grown up walking and an environment he felt comfortable traversing.

“No, he vanished… His stuff is still at the station last I checked,” which if Kaden worked there gave some insight into how much attention he paid his coworkers “I think this thing got him.” What else could have? Actually… Starting to think along that line, there were a lot of things that could have gotten him. Not ideal. But here they were. “How do they feed?” he questioned glancing over to Kaden, “do they leave a mark? Or do they feed without leaving a trace… ‘Cause the thing I’ve been after seems to eat a person’s organs without leaving a single sign of laceration… It’s like they’ve been eviscerated without even being cut open.”

“Something like that,” he agreed but didn’t offer up anything further to clarify. It was his business why he was here and he didn’t particularly feel like sharing right now. What was interesting, was listening to what Kaden had to say about Regan. Mostly because he’d spoken regarding the issue with Nadia and it was something he wanted insight into. “So the faeness hadn’t been like- uh activated? Did her family not know or was she raised by humans?” that was curious, most fae were taken in or raised in the beliefs of their own unless they weren’t… “Does she understand what she is?”

Talk stopped as the grooves in the upturned ground grew deeper. Like whatever had come this way grew tired or simply couldn’t be bothered to carry whatever it had taken. Or maybe they were just near its nest… Quietly, Arthur inhaled the scent of damp earth and static that seemed to charge the air as though they stood on the edge of a brewing storm just waiting to break. The ticking was loud, as though a clock were right beside them except there was no glint of metal or anything of the sort. Weird. “Yeah… It’s… well, a couple of neighbours reported hearing ticking around the time of the murder.” He kept his voice quiet not wishing to give away their location if possible, “let’s keep downwind…” his eyes tracked the nearby foliage and route they’d been following which seemed to open up ahead into some kind of clearing “looks like it opens up ahead… Maybe we can circle around, get a look before we go in? If the kid’s in there… We’ll need to lure it away or else she might get caught in the crossfire.” And that was not something Arthur was willing to have happen. Abigail might not have survived but Katherine was going home to her parents. He’d damn well see to that.

“Camazotz?” Kaden asked. “They don’t exactly feed delicately. Not like a vampire. Mostly just tear things apart. They get pretty aggressive.” His mouth pulled into a thin line. It didn’t exactly add up to a giant bat monster. “Well then, guess we got two monsters, then. Because I know I was tracking a camazotz earlier.” Fuck. He rubbed his face a moment, trying to piece shit together. Grabbed children, removed organs. No trace. It could be some kind of vampire? Maybe? Didn’t sound much like fae, other than maybe a glaistig, but he had a feeling they were pretty messy eaters if he remembered correctly. Guess they’d have to find out together. He was sure this would all click when he saw what they were up against.

Kaden’s brow furrowed. He didn’t really understand why Arthur cared. And how did he know about activation? It wasn’t something he was familiar with really as a hunter. Not that he was a warden or anything. There was something he wasn’t saying. A few things. He was sure of that. “Guess not. Her family is her biological one as far as I know, if that’s what you’re asking. And they sure sound human to me, though. She barely will say the word fae but she sort of gets it. She knows shit’s different.” There was no way she understood it, though. But that hardly felt like his fucking business.

The more of the tracks they followed, the farther away the sound got. Kaden squinted his eyes, tried to dig down deep into his well of knowledge. He’d studied so many different species as a kid under his parent’s guidance. He knew he learned about something like this “The softer that ticking, the closer we are,” he whispered to his current companion. But shit, nothing else was there. Putain de fucking merde. He sighed and had to accept that was all that was coming as he followed the tracks downwind. For as useless as he was sure the guy would be later on, his ideas weren’t completely out of line yet. “And how do you suggest we lure it out without harming the kid? If it’s feeding, it might be too fucking late.”

It didn’t add up. What Kaden described and the things Arthur had seen with his own eyes didn’t amount in his mind to this being the same creature. Which doubled the danger tonight. Either they were up against a camazotz as Kaden suggested or it was some other fiend. Or maybe even both. “Ah skide,” he muttered under his breath the thought not sitting all too well with him. One creature yeah maybe two? That changed things. But then Arthur thought of Katherine, and of Abigail and the flare of resolve settled once more. They’d just have to figure it out.

In all honesty, it was curiosity, attempting to piece together the fragments of information he held the tethers of and frame them into something that made some sort of rational sense of a situation he really only had an outline of. But the clarification gave some pieces to fill in a larger picture. “Huh,” interesting but while his curiosity wished to poke for more information Arthur got the sense it would only provoke Kaden’s ire which wasn’t something he particularly wanted to do right now.

He shifted the bow off his shoulder moving and handling the weapon with a familiar ease. Some things never left you. Still, Arthur kept low mindful of his foot-placement; he hadn’t stalked a creature in a fair while but the memories of the necessary steps hadn’t entirely forgone him. Kaden’s information was useful, and Arthur tilted his head to listen out for the ticking that seemed to grow a little louder as they moved around the clearing.

Eventually, Arthur stopped crouched on the edge of the clearing illuminated by the moon filtering through broken branches overhead. There were scrape marks near a hole in the ground, likely where this creature had gone. They needed to lure it out. Maybe his own blood? Would that entice the creature? But then again luring it straight to them seemed like a ridiculously risky plan. “Maybe,” he agreed softly his eyes fixing on a shape that turned out to be a deer stepping into the clearing; a potential distraction revealing itself then “or maybe we need to give it something else to focus on.” This thing fed on organs, so blood was bound to get its attention right? “Draw it out with that, then we ambush it when it comes out to investigate?”

Arthur knocked an arrow and drew the string a little slowly, taking aim but holding the shot until he heard Kaden’s verdict on the idea. It wasn’t as if going into the hole was anything but a suicide mission. Better to utilise the element of surprise if they could.

There was no doubt in Kaden’s mind that the hole they found led directly to the monster in question, whatever it was. The ticking was so soft it was almost a whisper. They were close. Or rather, it was close. So close Kaden was sure it had to have an idea they were there. If it didn’t, it was too deep into feeding on that child and they were far too late. At this point there was no way they were still hunting the camazotz, he’d have to double back for that another day most likely. He sighed looking at it. Hopping down was nothing but that death wish he’d snipped at Arthur about earlier. Before he could work together a plan, see if he had anything he could throw down there, the other man was pointing out the deer nearby. Kaden sighed as his mouth pulled into a thin line. “Blood, sure.” Luring it out was a good idea, no doubt. But if this was a vampire and one that favored organs to boot, he had a hard time believing any animal would satiate it. Arthur has already taken aim. “Go ahead. But if it’s got the kid down there, it doesn’t really need a snack.”

The lure wasn’t a horrible plan all the same. Kaden was hardly a slayer. He knew a lot about a good number of vampire species and while he couldn’t recall the specifics on this ticking one or the proper name, he knew damn well no deer was going to remotely compare to a human. In that case, it seemed like one simple option presented itself. And even that was a gamble. Kaden pulled out his knife and sliced down on top of his arm. A few times, making sure to tilt the blood pooling out of his flesh down the hole. He winced as the sting of the wound hit him, but it was fine. He’d heal fast enough. And the adrenaline kick of the pain didn’t hurt to have on his side. Once he was pretty sure a sufficient amount had slid on down as far as it would go, Kaden listened and heard movement in the distance. “Hide. Get in positions. Something,” he whispered to Arthur as he scrambled to find some cover away from the hole, get a weapon out and ready. Hopefully.

Arthur’s eyes cut aside with Kaden’s remark, his lips thinned in mild discontent considering he didn’t exactly see the hunter suggesting anything useful right now. Instead of letting the arrow fly he eased the tension on the string and lowered his aim. He’d been about to ask what better idea Kaden had to get this thing out of there when a line of crimson spilled forth over Kaden’s palm. Arthur’s gaze switched between the blood and the hole. Gods did this man have a death wish?

It had been a momentary thought that had crossed his mind to employ but considering the point was to lure the damn thing out away from them this seemed entirely counterintuitive considering it would lure the creature straight to them and a head on fight was not a thing he was looking for or in all honesty prepared for.

But here they were.

Arthur shifted back trying to put some distance between him and the hole, taking refuge behind a nearby rock.

The ticking noise grew momentary louder and louder and louder still. Had they scared it away? Strange… He strained to listen, but from where he crouched it only seemed to get louder.

Why would it run?

Unless…. Maybe there were other exits...

It was too late that he saw the flurry of movement from the shadowed foliage just behind where Kaden crouched. Shit… “Kaden look out behind you!” but the shout was too late as in a sweeping black and grey blur the Aswang launched itself at Kaden slashing its taloned fingers in a flurry of strikes to try and rake him limb from limb.

The air stood still a moment as Kaden waited behind some brush nearby, the ticking growing louder a moment before cutting out. He heard it before he saw it. Not the ticking, but the rustle of movement behind him. Kaden turned on his heel, knife in hand, ready for whatever he was abou to face.

It was like time slowed down. He saw the talons lash out and he threw himself to the ground, rolling to the side out the way. This was the part Kaden was trained for, it came naturally by now. The split second decisions, reading the creatures movements and responding accordingly. One of the claws caught on his back, ripping into his skin, but it was nothing more than added fuel to his fire by now as he pushed himself up, slashing his knife into the legs of the monster, digging it in and pulling the blad as deep and far as he could. The creature screamed, letting loose an unnatural wail. Funny, it didn’t bother him much. It was surely no banshee.

His lips curled up into a smile as he dodged again, ready to bring the knife down for a second strike when the talons lashed out again. Shit. He ducked. Too confident. But now he was at its side, almost flanking it; Kaden reached in and jammed his knife behind its knee, twisting it for full impact. Good luck walking now, connasse.

The vampire wailed and flapped its wings as it floated up.

Putain .

Still, this gave him a second. Vampire. Clearly. Couldn’t say which one. Rare, he remembered that much. But he’d bet a fucking stake would do the trick either fucking way. He swapped his knife for a stake as quick as possible while also reaching back for the shotgun. He flipped the safety off, it was already loaded, and he started trying to shoot that piece of shit out the sky. It was fast as hell, but he could tell he clipped it once or twice.

Hopefully Arthur was checking on that girl. If she was even still alive. Best to get her the fuck out of here.

It seemed that Kaden had more of a handle on the situation than Arthur had admittedly anticipated. So when he rolled and dodged out of the slashing range of whatever this thing was- and damn was it fast. It was admittedly more impressive than perhaps Arthur might’ve give n Kaden credit earlier in their encounters. But here they were and if Kaden had a handle here then…

Arthur turned his attention to the tunnel, sliding down the verge and out of the bushes towards the gaping darkness that penetrated the compacted earth leading to Gods knew where. Who knew how far it went down and whether the child would even still be down there but he had to search. Otherwise what was the point?

The sounds of mud and branches cracking at the commotion behind him continued and Arthur balled his fingers up in a fist before snapping his fingers together the friction sparking flame to life in his palm and lighting up the entrance which he could now see was smeared with dark black patches… No doubt where other meals of this creature had been dragged on the nights it hadn’t raided town and the smell was enough to make him wrinkle his nose in disgust.

But there was no time to waste, stepping forwards Arthur’s foot slipped a little on some loose earth on the sharp decline of the tunnel. Bracing himself he crouched and shuffled forwards, slipping here and there on the traversal, down and down to the occasional ledge until the burrow flattened out and grew in height to the point Arthur could stand at a hunch the shadows driven away by the flame in his palm. There was no noise down here, save the echoes of his inhale and exhale. “Ab-” no, that wasn’t right “Katherine?” he called holding the flame up but hearing no response.

Shit .

Without another word Arthur plunged forwards into the network of tunnels calling out and hoping for some kind of response.

It was a couple of minutes walking when he heard it: sniffles and short-sharp snivels of a child trying not to cry. Picking up his pace, occasionally bumping his head on a few lumps of the ceiling Arthur had to drop down to his knees and squeeze through a narrower passage that widened into a small underground cavern. The shadows bouncing off the walls and illuminating the three-by-three metre ish space along with a little girl in muddied gryffindor pyjamas smeared with blood huddled amongst a pile of strewn bones.

“Katherine?” Arthur tried to keep the panic from his voice, keep it level, calm as he crawled nearer pausing when she flinched and holding his other hand up as a scared pair of gunmetal grey eyes peered back at him. Eyes he’d seen countless times in a mirror. “Hey now… Your mummy and daddy sent me… My name’s Arthur.”

A few more sniffles followed before she lifted her head, fear plain as day in her features “is the scary monster gone?”

“My brave friend is fighting it…” slowly Arthur moved forwards, “but we need to get out of here hm? Get you home. I’m going to need you to be brave.” His eyes went to the nightclothes, “brave like Hermione hm? Can you do that for me?”

The little girl’s eyes went from his face to the fire floating above his palm, it took a few but her young mind seemed to process the options of a magic man here to help or an angry monster. With a slow nod she unballed and slowly crawled over, taking Arthur’s one outstretched and unflaming hand. “‘Mione always has a plan… Beat the bad bad monsters…”

“That’s right… Come on, let’s beat the bad monsters.” Arthur stooped, scooping her up and heading back along the route they’d come as quickly as possible. Gods he hoped Kaden was capable enough to pull this off.

Kaden was reloading when he saw a flash of motion. The professor with a death wish must have gone off to find the kid. Good.

Less good was the fact that when he turned his attention back to where the monster had been, there was no monster. Putain.

He felt the claws swipe at his back and screamed out in pain, curling away from the attack as best he could before reeling around to get a good look at it. Before Kaden could take another shot, the monster had pinned him to the ground and was going for his throat. Not fucking today. Kaden took the butt of the handle and rammed it at the monster’s head as he struggled to keep it away from his arteries. The beast squealed and seemed a bit stunned. It was a split second, but that was all Kaden needed to jam his knee into the creature and push it off him. It was strong, he still only made about a few inches of room for him to scramble away, but it was enough. He pulled out his knife and dug the blade in wherever he could get a piece. The talons were at him again, but this time his knife hit the wings, straight through. He yanked the blade down with all he had, even as he felt a claw dig into his leg. Blood spilled and sprayed as the monster tried to flinch and flap its wing. There was no escape now, not for either of them.

Kaden took the mere moments he had until the beast came at him again to reach for his stake. The talons dug deeper into his leg and he could feel the monster’s breath on his neck, inches away from tearing at his flesh when Kaden jammed the wooden stake into its heart. For a second, he thought he’d missed and he was sure that the teeth were about to sink into him, not even to feed, but to kill. Then, the monster paused and shuttered, then turned to dust.

As the dust settled and fell on top of him, Kaden collapsed farther onto the ground. Everything fucking hurt. Right, yeah, that was a lot of injuries. They were all pulsing now. Fuck. He’d have to get off of the ground eventually. “You still alive?” he called out to Arthur. If he was even still around. Kaden had no fucking clue. For all he knew, he was talking to himself. “What about the kid?” Maybe if they were there, it’d inspire him to sit up and assess his injuries, get up off the floor. Maybe. Ow.

It was a struggle up the shingle laden slope and several times his footing slipped; threatening to give way and plummet them back down into the depths of the tunnels. It was harder trying to do this one handed, but here they were. Arthur could hear the fight; impacts of what he could only assume was a blade or some weapon Kaden had brought along and the wails of a creature still continuing to fight. Well, credit to him for surviving this long. Suddenly the friction of his boots gave way and Arthur cursed reaching out blindly for the wall in the hopes of latching onto something.

His fingers hooked in on a divot, rocks crumbling down behind them as Katherine whimpered; her eyes screwed up tight. There was no helping the grunt as the jagged rock sliced into his palm and blood welled between his fingers. Gods he wasn’t built for this stuff anymore. He never had been and yet he always ended up getting into situations that called for brute strength. Typical. Maybe he needed to take Mer up on that gym offer. Still he persevered, arms and shoulders burning he gritted his teeth and hauled them both up and over immediately pushing the child away from the entrance and rolling over to survey the beast on top of Kaden. “Bloody hell--” he muttered scrambling to his feet and coaxing Kat up “go hide by the rocks okay? Wait until the monster’s gone.”

The little girl fled without question and Arthur unhooked the axe from his belt about to charge in…

Right as the monster exploded in a cloud of grey dust. Picked up and scattered by a wind that howled through the clearing. “Well… That’s one way to do it,” he murmured, shunting the axe and fixing it back into his belt as he walked over. “Bit shaken but she’s okay...“ He stopped near Kaden, summoning a flame to his palm as he sought any patches of blood noticing the one on Kaden’s leg. “Did it get you anywhere else?” he asked, shifting to kneel and inspect the wound, pulling the tattered material open to inspect the gash that oozed blood. Wiping his mud speckled brow on the sleeve of his jacket to clear his eyes. “Just stay there for a sec, let me see this,” he set his free hand that wasn’t illuminating the area to one side of the wound, willing a few tears that came from natural emotional relief that they’d managed to get here in time. The dripped onto the wound, sizzling for a moment before vanishing as the muscle and sinew started to thread itself back together. When he was sure the wound was going along on track he swiped his eyes again and sat back looking over towards the rocks. “Kat! You can come out now… The monster’s gone.”

A moment passed before the young girl hesitantly shuffled from behind the cover. Matted raven hair, dark, a messy tangle, and bright gunmetal grey eyes. An unknown family trait. “Did you get it?”

“My friend here did,” Arthur looked at Kaden offering a hand out for him to take to get back to his feet “I told you he would.”

“She’s okay? Shit. That’s unexpected.” Kaden’s eyes went wide a second. “But good! That’s good. Just sort of used to worst case scenarios.” Kaden earned a fucking nap after this. But the forest floor wasn’t the place for that. He was about to stand up when Arthur was standing over him, telling him to stay still. “I’m fine, I can assess my own wounds, thanks,” he said, going to sit up. Kaden sighed when it was clear that he wasn’t going to be given that option. Every instinct he had was to kick out as Arthur examined his leg; he fucking hated having anyone tend his wounds. It made him entirely too vulnerable and helpless. It also made him stupid to not let someone take care of his injuries but allt he same. But as Kaden looked up at Arthur, his brow furrowed. Was the man’s hand on fire? That was definitely fire. Coming out of his hand. “ Putain de merde,” he grumbled mostly to himself. “Why didn’t you tell me you were a spell--” The creases in his forehead only deepened as he felt small drops of something hit his leg. And then the pain fading. “Okay, then…” Kaden trailed off, trying to fit the pieces of this puzzle together. Flame hands, healed leg, and it looked like Arhur was wiping something off his face. He opened his mouth to ask when he called over the child. A little girl. Dark hair and light eyes. And something a little familiar, though he couldn’t pinpoint it. Still, there went all opportunity to try and get some answers. He knew what he wanted to ask couldn’t happen in front of a kid. But he had a hunch his current companion was no moral human but something else entirely.

He was glad to see her alive. By all accounts, she shouldn’t be. It was good when hunting actually worked the way it was meant to. Monster slain, humans saved, no one dead, all was well. He took Arthur’s hand and let the man pull him up, wincing as the scrapes across his back throbbed with pain. Guess he was going to be sleeping on his side for a while. “Yup, monster’s dead. You won’t have to worry about her anymore.” That wasn’t true. Kid would see this in her nightmares for years to come, no doubt. For a second he considered leaning down to get closer to her level. Then his back told him that was completely out of the question. “I bet you were really brave down there. And now Mr. Arthur is going to make sure you get home safe and sound, right?” His last question was directed more towards the adult. The likely very supernatural adult. Part of him wanted to object, tell Arthur he had this handled. Trusting that a supernatural could care for a human was hard for him. Even given, well, everything. Sure, he’d healed Kaden, helped rescue the kid, but maybe the healing was just blackmail, waiting to be collected as payment later. And who knew who this girl really was to him anyway. Still, he wasn’t in much shape to argue. And he wouldn’t do it in front of a child, not if he could help it. She had enough trauma for one night. “Come on, let’s get back. We’ll have time to talk later. Don’t need to spend any more time in these woods than we have to. “

“I bet,” how many worst case scenarios? Flashes of the dead crossed Arthur’s mind, some collateral damage over the years and others premeditated in their demise. Too many hunters that had left a sour taste in his mouth, but they had their uses on occasion. Arthur ignored the comments, a smear of mud across his face from the brush of his hand obfuscating any evidence of what he’d done to fix Kaden’s leg only that he’d fixed it. It was a dangerous game to play perhaps, but he’d rather not be responsible for leaving him out here unable to walk to be bait for whatever else might just happen to fancy a midnight snack. Arthur had some morals and centuries of a keen sense to leaving no person behind meant often he felt compelled to help even if he had no particular reason or benefit to.

With a grunt of effort he hauled Kaden up to his feet stepping back but lingering close enough towards the child with a degree of protectiveness that he didn’t care or seem inclined to explain. Not right here and possibly not even in the future. But there were lingering concerns. The events of tonight would have repercussions for who knew how long? But that was an issue to deal with in the fallout. Right now there was only one thing of importance.

“Back home,” Arthur said eyeing Kaden for a moment and wondering just what was going through his mind. There was a moment of tension before he chose to let it go, perhaps they could both walk away from this though a part of him doubted that. Turning towards the young girl he bent and scooped her up, propping her on his hip where she buried her face against his shoulder.

Quietly, the trio turned back towards the darkness of the forest naught but ash and dust left behind them. Javier’s work here complete and some degree of justice served.

[the-unholy-typewriter]

Even As We Know It

an: I've been trying to write this for two months but I kept getting stuck on different parts and I've changed the ending at least twice. I also had to cut out a few jokes that weren't as funny the second time I looked over them. Also I'm working on a part 2 of Summoning if anyone's interested.

For someone who was be precognitive, the apocalypse really hit you out of nowhere. Apparently your abilities thought it was more important to warm you about the guy with the nice ass doing sweet flips than it was to warn you about the undead cannibals.

warnings: language, guns, zombies, non graphic mentions of death and gore

words: 1,533

...

Seeing the future wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Overall it was pretty useless, really. Just because you knew that something was gonna happen didn't mean that you could do anything, let alone that anyone would believe you. That meant that the precognitive dreams were pretty much useless.

There was also the whole see someone's future with a touch but it felt really invasive and also just made you sad most of the time, which was why you opted to wear long sleeves that covered your hands no matter the weather. It had, however, led to a fairly lucrative career as a fortune teller. You could also get a pretty good read with a deck of tarot cards but that's besides the point. The crystal ball was pretty much bullshit, though - at least for your abilities.

Anyway, your abilities were pretty much useless. Which is how you ended up in the situation that you were in now.

You had moved to Blüdhaven about a year ago hoping to get mugged less. It got old fast when every time a thug grabbed you you got to see them get the beat down from Batman. Which you of course then got to witness in person soon after. Although sometimes it was Robin or even the Red Hood (you were really glad when he started using rubber bullets and you didn't have to see someone get shot in the head twice anymore and then complain about it to him). It didn't take you long to learn that Blüdhaven wasn't actually that much better than Gotham but at least you didn't get mugged during the day anymore. Plus Blüdhaven had Nightwing who was definitely more charming than any of the other Bats you'd had the chance to meet (which was all of them but Robin but you were pretty sure that that was for the best if what Jason had told you was anything to go by). Overall, it was at least somewhat of an improvement.

Or at least it had been until the zombies showed up.

You're not exactly sure what caused the zombies apocalypse (this time - you'd been there for the Gotham zombie apocalypse(s) as well and had been hoping to avoid another one) but you're pretty ready to kill who or whatever is responsible. You had been trying to mail a letter to your grandmother (who still lived in Gotham and hadn't quite gotten the hang of emails or texting yet) when the screaming started. You had lived in the most dangerous city in the world long enough to know that screaming meant that it was time to get the hell out of Dodge as soon as physically possible. Which is exactly what you did. Or at least tried to do. 

You had only made it a few blocks when you were attacked by one of the undead. You had taken a few self defense classes at your college (Jason and Roy had tried to teach you some stuff as well but they were absolute shit teachers) but they didn't really cover zombies so you can't really be blamed for the fact that you weren't exactly winning this fight.

That's when the guy from your dreams showed up. Literally. He had been in your dreams every night for the past couple weeks, doing sweet flips and having a nice ass. You kind of wished you'd gotten a heads up about the whole end of the world (or probably not actually - apocalypses tended not to stick when you had superheroes) instead of the attractive guy you were now watching pistol whip a zombie with an airsoft gun. What the fuck.

When the guy turned to you, probably to ask if you were alright, you couldn't help but blurt out, "Why an airsoft gun? Wouldn't a real gun be more useful?"

"I'm from Gotham," he shrugged, as if that was all the answer you needed and honestly it was good enough for you right now. He then smiled, looking unfairly attractive given the circumstances, before offering his hand for you to shake, "Detective Dick Grayson, this place is looking pretty dead, huh?"

You groaned as you reached to shake his hand without thinking. A series of visions exploded in front of your eyes, too quick for you to properly discern what was happening. You saw Dick and Bruce Wayne and Nightwing and Batman and a familiar idiot in a dumb red helmet (suddenly the airsoft gun made sense). When you blinked you saw Dick Grayson staring worriedly at you and suddenly everything clicked into place. You withdrew your shaking hand from his and tried to force a casual grin across your face, "So, officer, you always carry an airsoft gun or is this just a special occasion?"

Dick glanced at the gun and chuckled, "It was a gag gift from my brother but it's surprisingly useful when the city becomes overrun by zombies. By the way, you are surprisingly calm about the whole zombie thing."

"I'm from Gotham, too," You explained with a casual shrug, "I was there when Scarecrow zombified the city. And the time the Joker zombified the city. And the time Ivy used plant mind control. And the time-"

"Okay, I get the idea," Dick sighed, holding his hands up in surrender, "We Gothamites aren't fazed by much these days."

You grinned before a nearby groan reminded you of the situation that you were currently in and you quickly sobered up, "Do you know of anywhere safe we can go? If not I think I know a place."

"Sorry but I won't be able to stay with you, I have to help protect the city," Dick frowned, "But I can escort you to safety if you'd like?"

You agreed, beginning the trek back to your shop, the way thankfully abandoned except for a few undead stragglers. It took you about fifteen minutes to get there, the two of you easily filling the time with talk of living in Gotham and how you like Blüdhaven so far.

As you got closer to the shop, you began to dread having to say goodbye to the handsome officer that you had just met. That thought was pushed aside, however, when you caught a glimpse of a familiar redhead through the shop windows. You sped up your pace, know that the idiot was prone to breaking your things and not wanting a repeat of the last time he had come to visit your place of work (he still owed you several hundred dollars).

"Damnit Roy," You called to the man as you roughly yanked the door open, ignoring the way that Dick's eyebrows raised as he entered behind you, "You better not have touched anything!"

Roy jumped, dropping the deck of tarot cards across the floor and turning to you with his hands in the air, "I didn't break anything! Please don't call the cops."

"Fine," You sighed, bending down to pick up the cards, smirking slightly as Roy fumbled to help you. You were reminded of Dick's presence when he bent to help the two of you as well, "Roy, you know Dick, right? Jason's brother?"

Roy scoffed at your question, causing you to reflexively roll your eyes, "Of course I know him. I've known him longer than Jason has." 

"You know Jason?" Dick asked, seeming slightly concerned.

"Unfortunately," You muttered as the two men handed you their cards and you began to absent mindedly shuffle them, "Since meeting Jason and Roy my life has been nothing but suffering. I haven't known peace since they almost got me killed by what I'm pretty sure was a ghost dog and then abandoned me and left Batman to save me... but that's a story for another time."

Roy shifted, looking slightly sheepish, "To be fair, it's not our fault that it seemed to like you so much."

"You definitely have to tell me about that story later", Dick said with a grin that only widened when Roy groaned, "But I really need to get going and help get this mess taken care of."

Before he could leave you quickly grabbed one of your business cards off the table and handed it to him, pausing only a short moment as you processed the flood of images flashing before your eyes, "The second number is my personal. Call me later and I'll tell you the full story of how I met the two bastards."

Dick smiled and made sure to tuck the card safely in the inner pocket of his jacket before hurrying out and into the chaotic streets of the city.

"I can't believe I just watched you flirt with Dick Grayson in front of my own two eyes," Roy complained, "You know he's had like fifty girlfriends, right?"

"That's fine. I only saw one girlfriend in his future," You told him with a wink and a cheeky grin.

"Wait-"

"By the way, didn't you know that Bruce Wayne is Batman?" You asked, oddly casual about knowing the answer to Gotham's biggest mystery as you began making your way up to your apartment above the shop with your companion following after.

Roy tripped up the stairs.

[erekiosuncreativeideas]

Reliving An Old Nightmare - Chapter 10

<= Chapter 9

Summary : Snatcher and Hat Kid experience BFF stuff together, and everything is completely fine! Also available on AO3 : https://archiveofourown.org/works/22337299/chapters/55072831

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New chapter! I hope you'll like it! A new big "thank you" to Krekka01, who corrected it.

You know, I should stop splitting chapters into several parts, but I always end up writing too much. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy reading it! Please don't hesitate to tell me if you do! (or reblog/like, it makes me happy too!)

Don’t forget to check out the audio file associated with this chapter !

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Chapter 10

-“So… if Vanessa’s not the mastermind, who is?” asked Snatcher after a moment of silence. His stare was fixed on the little Hat Kid, as his mind prayed for her to know who was responsible. But the girl only shook her head, visibly embarrassed.

-“I… I don’t know,” she answered with a quiet voice. The ghost’s hopes were shattered in thousands of pieces with the brat’s awful recognition. Before he was able to retort anything, his contractor lifted her hands in defence, trying to justify herself. “...yet! I don’t know yet! We still have several days to find out who is behind this!”

-“Yeah, which is a lot of time, isn’t it?” he replied sarcastically. “Oh well, why don’t we spend the rest of the day drinking tea? After all, we have all the time in the world! Oh, wait… we don’t!”

-“Would you please shut up!” yelled the child, exasperated by his behaviour. “Yes, I know we don’t have much time! But I arrived here just like you, only several hours ago! As if I-”

-“Wait...” the spirit interrupted her, just as his mind became blank. “What do you mean, ‘you just arrived here’?”

Surely, he must have misunderstood what she had said because there couldn’t be any possible logical explanation behind this. Snatcher had been in this dimension for a whole day already! A night had passed since his arrival, so why was she talking about mere hours? This didn’t make any sense!

The hat-wearing girl seemed to think the same thing as him, because a clear expression of confusion crossed her features. Her eyes were fixed on his, as her mind was probably trying to understand as well.

-“Uh… I mean that I’ve been here for three to four hours, at most?” She raised her eyebrows, puzzled for a few seconds. However, the perplexity on her face didn’t last long, as it was quickly replaced by a much more horrified expression. She let out a small “oh” as her breathing sped up little by little.

-“What ‘oh’? What now?” questioned the shade, infuriated. Something was going on, and he hated not understanding what exactly. Plus, there were too many things happening at the moment, and if another one was added to the pile… it was already too much as it was.

-“We have to go back now,” simply murmured the brat, now completely frozen. She was looking everywhere but at Snatcher, panicked by something he couldn’t tell yet.

-“What? Hey, kid!” He took her by the shoulders, forcing her to come back to reality. “Why do we have to go back? What’s happening?”

The sudden contact woke up the child from her panic attack, and she slowly rose her head to meet his nervous stare. The look on her face did nothing to reassure Snatcher a bit. He could feel his body tensing up from the apprehension. Finally, after what felt like hours to him, the brat opened her mouth:

-“Time isn’t synchronized. It’s moving much slower on the ship than it does down there.”

The shade remained motionless for a few instants, his brain trying to get what the little girl was telling him. The time was moving differently? But then, it hit him: that was exactly what she had explained to him earlier when she was talking about the Void.

“The laws of physics don’t apply there, so you could make several steps and have moved forward by a mile, just like you could walk for hours for nothing.”

-“You mean… that several days might have passed since we came into the ship?” questioned the spirit, now very concerned by the current situation.

-“I wouldn’t say days, but…”

The shade cut her short and hit the nearby crate with his fist. It shook everything on it, and water splashed from the inside of the saucepan, while the kid’s colour pencils jumped from the shock. Snatcher didn’t care. What was it, compared to the fact that they might have lost several hours in the stupidest way possible? His anger was now palpable.

-“You’re telling me that, even though we have a countdown problem, we just lost time by coming into this spaceship of yours? Is that what this is about?!”

The hat-wearing brat avoided his stare and hunched, more than ashamed.

-“I didn’t know, okay?” she shot back. “I thought it wouldn’t be a problem!”

-“You thought? You’re supposed to be the time expert here, kiddo!” countered Snatcher, louder. The hair on his spectral body was becoming sharper and spikier as seconds passed. His figure was now looming menacingly over the small child’s one, as his fingers slowly turned into deadly claws. His left hand scratched the inside of the saucepan without meaning to, and his teeth were becoming more and more dangerous. “If you don’t find a solution right now, the lack of oxygen won’t kill you - I will!”

-“I have no idea what’s going on!” screamed the little girl suddenly, with a voice Snatcher had never heard before. “Happy, now?! I’m just as lost as you! I’ve been stuck in this ship for hours, not knowing if I would either die of thirst or asphyxia... alone!”

She was on the verge of tears, trembling as she kept her arms along her body, fists clenched in pure rage. She was glaring at the ghost with a fury that looked so strange on her. The spirit was taken aback so much that he couldn’t help but waver at the weird and unusual sight. His spiky hair turned soft again, little by little, as he floated back, still staring at her in bewilderment.

-“Do you know what it’s like?!” she continued, tears trickling down her cheeks. “To feel so stupid and incompetent on something you’re supposed to know like the back of your hand? To know that if you fail, you might have someone’s death on your conscience?!”

The last sentence hit Snatcher close to home, as he was immediately reminded of all the villagers’ blood on his hands. Did he know what it felt like? He certainly did, unfortunately. He had learnt how to live with it as years went by, but after seeing the village alive again… it had been quite a shock to him. And his contractor, a child, experienced it as well. A sudden and strong feeling of guilt engulfed him completely, as he remained motionless, unable to ignore it.

Why did he have to feel emotions?!

Silence fell in the room again, both of them avoiding each other’s eyes. The brat wiped her tears with her sleeves and sniffed noisily, frowning and looking away. She didn’t seem sad - just extremely frustrated and exhausted. What just happened had surely been the final straw. Snatcher didn’t know why, but he disliked the sight that was in front of him. He had seen her cry and die plenty of times during his advanced contracts! So why was this time so different? He couldn’t tell. However, there was this annoying feeling looming over him, ordering him to apologize to the little girl, no matter how ridiculous it sounded to him. He wanted her dead, so why did he care?

Wait. He didn’t care, what was he even thinking? Clearly, the danger of their current situation was giving him incoherent thoughts. There were absolutely no other explanations to that awful feeling in his non-existent stomach.

Thinking about their current position reminded him that they needed to stop wasting time.

-“So…” he started again, deciding not to apologize (what for, after all?) before addressing their main problem, though in an uncertain tone, “once we go back, what do we need to do?”

He wished to avoid going back to the manor very much. After the way he had left, after hearing Vanessa crying her eyes out, and after learning that several hours may have passed since his outburst, the ghost wasn’t even sure there was still a village to go back to; however, according to his contractor, the Time Piece was hidden in the mansion, much to his dismay.

The child sniffed once again, lifting her head to look at him with a tired expression painted on her face.

-“We need to find the Time Piece and break it to get out of here. If this dimension really is linked to it, then breaking it should reverse the process.”

-“Should?” remarked the shade, doing his best not to sound too sarcastic. For reasons.

The brat pinched her nose, clearly unhappy with the evolution of the conversation.

-“I told you, this is new to me. No one has ever created something from a Time Piece! I mean, not on purpose. Time Rifts appear because of time distortions, that is to say when a Time Piece is broken. But this one… someone made it - created it from scratch.” She paused, staring into space as she started thinking again. “I have no idea how that’s even possible.”

Snatcher had no idea either, though it was not surprising, given his lack of knowledge in that field of study. However, if the time specialist before him didn’t know what to think, then their situation didn’t look too good.

-“So, the Time Piece,” he said, wanting to get back on the subject without losing more time, “where is it? I know you said it’s in” -he paused, looking elsewhere for a brief moment- “the manor, but in what room exactly?”

As he said those last words, his mind kept repeating old memories from his past, ones he wished he could erase completely, but he knew better.

“Please, not the cellar. Not the cellar, don’t tell me it’s in there. Anywhere but there.” Similar pleas echoed in his head on loop, as he did his best to remain calm, not wanting to show his discomfort to his contractor. Even though she knew his past, from what she had told him earlier, that didn’t mean he wanted to show any weakness to her. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice anything different. She simply hunched again, replying in a tone much too uncertain to Snatcher’s taste.

-“Yeah, about that…”

The spirit knew there was going to be a catch. It was in there, he knew it! Where else could it have been, when Life was so determined to make him suffer more and more? It was simply pure irony.

The child noticed his distress and rose both of her hands, trying to get his attention back on her:

-“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t get mad, I swear it’s not my fault!”

The ghost lifted his eyebrows in confusion.

-“What do you mean, ‘not your fault’?” he questioned with a voice full of wary.

-“Well, see, usually I know where my Time Pieces are. I can sense them, it’s in my nature.” The ghost tried to interject to ask about that point, but the little girl stopped him with a hand gesture. “It’s complicated, we don’t have time for that! What matters is that I usually know where they are and. When I don’t, I find out pretty quickly. But this time…”

She paused, looking for words. It felt like an eternity for Snatcher, who was silently begging for his biggest fear not to be true. When she finally opened her mouth again, the ghost couldn’t help but hold his breath, even though he had no need for air in his state in the first place.

-“This time, I don’t know precisely where it is. I can sense it’s in the manor, but nothing more than that… it’s very hazy. I think that someone is trying to hide it from me.”

The spirit almost let out a huge sigh of relief but managed to keep it to himself. At least, it wasn’t in the cellar… or at least, even though the awful possibility still existed, it wasn’t certain. Nonetheless, what the brat had just said promptly brought him back to reality.

-“Someone… you mean the person who made this dimension?” he asked, trying to gather as much information as possible about that very worrying situation. The kid shrugged, frowning as she replied.

-“I don’t know. Probably?” She shook her head. “I don’t think Vanessa would be able to hide something like the Time Pieces, since they are quite powerful, so-”

-“Don’t underestimate her, kiddo.” The warning came out by itself and Snatcher gritted his teeth as he realized what he had just said. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut?! He sighed, ignoring the sad look appearing on the child’s face. He didn’t need to be pitied. Especially on something regarding that woman.

And then it hit him. If they had to search for the Time Piece inside the manor, it certainly wouldn’t be easy to find. If someone had gone this far in order to hide the Time Piece from its literal alien owner, Snatcher doubted he was going to find it on the dining table. The worst-case scenario would be to find it in that place, and he very much hoped he wouldn’t have to set foot in there.

In any case, that meant he would need to go back there and face Vanessa. That simple thought made him shiver. He didn’t know if he would be able to. His ex knew, and that alone was enough to scare him. Plus, the way she had been crying when he left, if Subcon was still standing at this time, she would still punish him in any horrible way.

What if she locked him in the cellar again? What if she froze him the instant she caught sight of him again? If he ever died or disappeared, then what about the kid? If she wasn’t captured by Vanessa and her accomplice after that, she would either die with the Time Rift or asphyxiated in her own spaceship. But he used to want her dead! No, not “used to” - he still did! Why did it bother him that much, then?

The ghost closed his eyes, not wanting to go on this trail of thoughts at all. Doing so wasn’t a good idea. For reasons. Again.

-“Snatcher?” The spirit reopened his eyes, only to find the little girl staring at him with a clear expression of worry on her face. The ghost felt a tingling in his chest as his eyes met hers. Great, just what he needed... more feelings! But that still didn’t change anything, and he knew very well what was going to happen eventually.

-“I’m going to go back there, aren’t I?” he asked, though it wasn’t a question. In the end, only the awful and horrifying recognition of what was waiting for him. He knew they couldn’t barge into the manor to steal the Time Piece without thinking, especially since they had no idea of who was helping Vanessa. They would be in the enemy’s territory, thus in great disadvantage. Plus, the ghost couldn’t help but feel like there was much more to this story than what they first thought. It was like they were the pawns of that someone’s chessboard. Their puppets. Their toys. And Snatcher hated that idea.

His question seemed to upset the child much more than what he anticipated. The hat-wearing kid lowered her eyes, as an expression of extreme guilt appeared on her face. She certainly had thought the same thing, without finding the courage to tell him. But Snatcher knew very well what needed to be done, much to his horror. However, the result wouldn’t be too different if he waited for the world to end itself. At least, even though Vanessa was extremely impulsive and volatile, they still had a chance.

Though, there was still the problem of that unknown enemy…

-“You don’t have to,” simply said the kid, in a quiet voice.

-“What other choice do we have, kiddo? Wait for death?” he replied, with an insincere scoff. “I mean, we don’t even know who’s behind this and why. You think I want to go? Believe me, I don’t.” And he really, really didn’t.

-“Then we could always wait for the night and go inside!” she countered, with a more panicked voice.

-“Yeah, and what about the guards outside?” He folded his arms in. “Trust me, we’ll definitely draw attention.”

A forced smile appeared on his lips and he stared into space, while the little girl was still trying to find other excuses for him not to go. Deep down, Snatcher knew he had no other choice. Not doing so would be accepting their doom without doing anything, and even though the afterlife was quite boring, he didn’t want to let go that easily. Plus, he finally had the occasion to take revenge on the one who had made not only his life hell but also his afterlife.

And even if he really didn’t want to admit it, even just to himself, there were… other reasons.

-“But…” The little voice brought him back to reality. “...what if she tries to hurt you again?”

The kid was now staring at his left hand, still in the warm water. Said hand didn’t hurt as much, which surprised him quite a lot, considering how bad the kid was at taking care of herself. At least, he had to admit he had been wrong to doubt her on that point.

He slowly raised his head towards the child once again and let a forced smile come on his ghostly lips. There were no other choice for now.

-“I thought we didn’t have much time?” he simply said, though the words felt so, so heavy in his mouth. His non-existent heart sunk as he accepted the only possible option they had for now. He had to go back, since Irony decided it would be the safest solution so far.

The kid’s face crumpled instantly, as she understood what meaning those words hid. She pounced towards him and threw herself into the spirit’s arms before he was able to do or say anything against it. The contact made him freeze completely and his injured hand left the saucepan suddenly, making it shake with the swift gesture. He felt the small arms of the girl hugging him tighter and tighter, as if she wanted to prove to herself that what was happening was real.

As if this was a goodbye.

Snatcher remained unmoving for a few seconds, not knowing how to act at all. The contact was so foreign to him, even more at this moment since he could feel sensations again. He could feel the kid’s heavy breathing against him, her heart pounding in her chest, her tears soaking his spectral form. Muffled sniffing could be heard, along with silent cries. The ghost’s arms were frozen mid-air. He didn’t know what to do with himself. After a while, he slowly lowered them, finally putting his hands on the kid’s shoulders. A horrible sensation, so, so painful, awoken inside him, as his hands felt the contact of the child’s clothes.

What was wrong with him?

-“Okay, now, that’s enough, move it!” He pushed the kid away, trying to hide the sadness that had taken place on his spectral face. He hated what was happening to him. It wasn’t like him. The hat-wearing brat raised her head, and their eyes met once again. Hers were red and swollen, but she still tried to smile despite it.

-“Are you sure?” she asked one last time, even though she probably knew his answer already.

-“Yeah. Take me back.”

The little girl wiped her eyes and nose once again, before nodding in a much more determined manner. She then searched for something in one of the pockets of her pants and handed it to him. It was a remote.

-“If things turn bad, use this. It’ll teleport you here immediately. I don’t need it, but I always carry it with me, just in case. Seems like it might be useful to you, now.”

The ghost grabbed the device with his right hand, not wanting to use his injured one too much before a little while. He squeezed the object, almost afraid of letting it fall down.

-“Yeah... I could use that,” he answered as a thank you.

-“I’ll do everything to synchronise the time on the ship to yours. That way, I’ll be able to meet you again, without losing any more time. If I manage to, and if you don’t use the remote until then, I’ll send another message to let you know about another meeting place. Sounds good?”

The ghost dismissed her with a hand gesture, though he couldn’t help but feel very nervous about what would wait for him in Subcon Village. Would it be frozen? He supposed there was only one way to find out, at this point.

-“Yeah, yeah, I got it. Let’s stop wasting time now.”

The kid nodded again, but before he could react, she took him into her arms once again, hugging him much tighter than before.

-“Kiddo, you know I’m dead and all, but if I were alive, you would have broken my ribs there, you know that?”

She chuckled at his words and let him go after a few seconds. The spirit held back a smile (what smile? He didn’t smile!) and floated away. The kid then lifted her right arm and clicked her fingers, after what had seemed like an eternity to Snatcher.

And then, everything went white again.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Welp, again with a cliffhanger, huh? Some things never change... I hope you liked this chapter! I can't wait to show you more of this story! Don't hesitate to share your impressions and theories, I LOVE reading them!!!

See you in the next chapter!

=> Chapter 11

[thelazyhermits]

Going back to 1st-year Fortune Au!....what plot points are different from the ones in tabf?

Hmmm good question. I’d say the majority of the major events go the same as TABF with a few changes here and there. Gonna put it under the cut to save y’all’s dashes lol

Like for the USJ arc, Fortune has a vision of the attack and sees Mumei in it which causes her to have a panic attack. Tamaki finds her and helps her out before she heads to the principal’s office to warn the teachers. So, she sits out of the USJ because she’s scared that Mumei will find her which is the reason he’s working with the LoV. Obviously, none of the teachers would force a girl to take part in an exercise that would potentially lead to her seeing her abuser again. UA takes the same measures as in TABF to avoid the attack but it still happens. Shinsou still comes looking for Fortune as soon as he can so he helps her out like in TABF.

The battle trial would be completely different because All Might would have the class for both 1-A and 1-B since each class now has an odd number of students. So, it made sense to just put the two classes together so each team could have two people. As luck would have it, Fortune and Shinsou end up on a team much to their excitement. After getting a vision about the whole Bakugou vs Midoriya battle, Fortune convinces All Might to change who those two teams face, telling him there would be a lot of damages he’d be responsible for if he didn’t heed her warning. She also threatened to tell Recovery Girl lol

As a result, Fortune and Hitoshi end up against Iida and Bakugou. Bakugou is fine with this cause he wants to go head to head with Fortune and prove he’s the best since he’s pissed about her getting the same score as him in the entrance exam. So, like canon, he guns for her while forcing Iida to guard the bomb.

Thanks to her Quirk, Fortune knows exactly what’s gonna happen, so she plans accordingly. Unlike what Midoriya did, Fortune doesn’t try to fight Bakugou alone. She and Shinsou team up to stop him using Shinsou’s Quirk which Bakugou has no idea about so they end up tricking him into putting the capture tape on himself. Then, they team up and successfully stop Iida so their team wins. Naturally, Bakugou is beyond pissed about this so this just makes him dislike Fortune even more lol

The only downside of this whole situation is after the trial ends Fortune’s drawback kicks in, transferring the pain Midoriya would’ve felt if he had battled Bakugou instead to her. She passes out from the pain, freaking Shinsou and Iida, who were right there, out. All Might tells them to immediately take her to the infirmary.

So, in this AU, Fortune finds out about that drawback sooner. Naturally, the teachers were wary of trying to change things with the USJ, but they couldn’t just do nothing when students’ lives were in danger. Fortune told them she was fine with taking the pain if it meant everyone would be safe, but they were still reluctant. So, Aizawa definitely feels a lot more guilty in this AU since his own student took his pain.

The Sports Festival is the same as TABF with Fortune sitting out since it’s dangerous for her to be seen on TV with Mumei on the loose. Even though by this point he knows she’s there, everyone still thinks it’s not a good idea. Plus, there’s the deal with Tensei and taking his pain which no one wanted to happen, but once again, they couldn’t just allow things to happen. That’s why the plan was for Tensei to capture Stain from the start rather than avoid him since they really didn’t want to risk Fortune getting all the pain Tensei would’ve received.

Since she didn’t participate in the Sports Festival, Fortune didn’t get any internship offers, but Aizawa takes her in to train her. The Stain incident happens like in TABF with Fortune getting kidnapped.

The final exam is different because Aizawa pairs Fortune with Bakugou because those two butt heads so much. To be fair, it’s mostly on Bakugou’s end since Fortune just tries to ignore him. She only really gets mad at him if he’s mean to Midoriya.

Are you familiar with the fic Yesterday Upon the Stair by PitViperofDoom? Well, Fortune & Bakugou’s exam goes pretty much exactly like how Midoriya and Bakugou’s goes. Fortune tries to convince Bakugou to work with her, but he’s not having it.

When he loses his temper, Bakugou takes a swing at her which she manages to dodge thanks to years of experience. However, she’s unable to avoid him shoving her against the wall which triggers a panic attack since it reminds her of all the times Mumei used to hold her against walls with his Quirk.

Bakugou immediately realizes something is wrong, so his grip is loose enough for her to push him away. After she does, Fortune manages to calm down enough to tell him if he wants to fight All Might he’ll have to do it alone before promptly running off.

While he’s definitely bothered by her weird behavior, Bakugou doesn’t go after her and instead heads for All Might. The fight doesn’t last long since while he’s getting beaten by All Might Fortune is heading for the exit by herself and manages to do so without getting stopped.

When All Might later finds her with an unconscious Bakugou in tow, Fortune is standing there, pale and teary eyed. As she tries to fight off the panic attack with no success, she apologizes to All Might for disappointing him before promptly passing out.

This is the point where her and Aizawa’s relationship gets rocky for awhile cause it was his bad call that put her in such a bad position. She keeps her distance from him while he internally beats himself up over making such a mistake. They do eventually make up, though, with Aizawa apologizing to her which catches her off guard since she’s not used to adults apologizing. In the end, Fortune decides to give him another chance since she wants to believe Aizawa isn’t like all the other adults who failed her in the past.

The summer camp goes pretty much the same as TABF, but there’s not really any bonding with Kouta since she is a hero student here so he’d want to keep his distance from her. But I could see her at least trying to talk to him. In regards to her special training, I absolutely have no idea what Aizawa would come up with for her, probably stick her in Tiger’s boot camp lol

Since by this point, Fortune is pretty paranoid thanks to her encounter with Stain. She keeps her bag of goodies with her almost all the time. Plus, she tried to incorporate them in her training too, so she has the stuff on hand during the villain attack.

Fortune is with Aizawa’s group when the attack happens cause he notices her fear related to the test of courage. His instincts tell him there’s more to it than just hating ghosts so he doesn’t force her to participate, so she still ends up leading him to Midoriya and taking Kouta to safety.

Unsurprisingly, her relationship with Bakugou is still bad cause of the final exam, but despite that, Fortune still runs to save him and Tokoyami. She’s actually been beating herself up the whole time for running away and abandoning Bakugou during the exam. It was the right thing to do for her mental health, but she still regrets it, thinking she was a coward for running away. That’s why she’s determined not to run away this time.

Even though she dislikes Bakugou, he’s still her classmate so she’d never leave him to suffer at the hands of the villains. Plus, she couldn’t call herself a hero if she did that. She’s scared out of her mind cause she knows Mumei will be there but she still goes. After all, Tokoyami, who she considers to be a good friend, will lose his Quirk if she doesn’t, and Fortune would never be able to forgive herself if that happened. So, the rescue happens just like it did in TABF.

I’m gonna stop there since it’s getting so long. If you wanna ask about other parts of the AU, just shoot me an ask ^^

[flute-mob]

Ouija

(let’s pretend that Heroes’ Day hasn’t happened yet)

From Parisian’s perspectives, Hawkmoth has got to be mysterious and weird af. He’s never been seen by human eyes, EVER, not by the cities heroes and not by the public. The only information about him that the public knows comes from recovered villain’s accounts of what he told them in their heads when they were akumatized and some fuzzy images of a purple suited man. 

Conspiracies on the internet go around that he is actually a ghost in the form of a butterfly possessing people. 

So it’s Halloween. Juleka has a ouija board and has invited the class to try using it to communicate to some ghosts at midnight on her boat for some fun creepy times, but then Nino is like:

What if we try using it to talk to Hawkmoth?

Everyone goes wild, ‘holy shit that would be so scary/cool/dangerous’

Obviously when they try, it doesn’t work.

They are obviously upset, but not surprised, what did they expect? It hits Alya a little hard though. She had had the Ladyblog livestream up, hoping to get some exclusive content of the first ever attempted conversation with Hawkmoth, and is pretty embarrassed that she wasn’t able to deliver on her promise that she has been hyping up her fanbase all day on. 

The party continues but Alya gets pretty angry and upset when her fans leave comments making fun of her for even trying and she is akumatized. Ladybug shows up out of nowhere (Marinette saw a little purple butterfly flit past the window a minute earlier and made some excuse about needing to leave by curfew— having her best friend suddenly disappear did Not help Alya’s situation). Ladybug ties up Evil!Alya almost right after she transforms and knocks her to her knees and presses her arms behind her back just holds there. After a couple awkward seconds pass of silence, Adrien (he tried to sneak away but Ladybug just keeps looking at him) asks 

“Uh, the akuma is probably in her phone. Aren’t you gonna, you know, ‘de-evilize' it…?” 

 “Hmmm… sorry... just thinking.”

She tells them that she had watched the Ladyblog livestream and just got an idea. (Of course she knows Hawkmoth isn’t a ghost and that this whole ‘akuma possession’ thing is just an aspect of his transmission powers but she doesn’t got the time to explain all that so she speaks in ghost terms). She says how when Nathaniel was akumatized, Hawkmoth was able to ‘fully possess’ him and controlled his arms for a bit. Just trying to call out to Hawkmoth’s ’spirit’ didn’t work, but now that he is possessing Alya, what if they tried using her as a spirit medium to contact him?

Adrien and Nino are already on it and scrambling to grab the board and they plop it down at Alya’s feet. Everyone (minus Ladybug) puts a finger on the planchette and waits for Evil!Alya to do the same. 

Hawkmoth meanwhile is a little amused at this little game that these children are trying to play as he watches the events unfold through Alya’s eyes. His villain has already been defeated and he thinks of just revoking the akuma at first, but instead decides to play with them. Who knows? Maybe he could get Ladybug to spill some secrets as well.

He takes control of Alya and has her place a finger on the planchette as well.

“Hawkmoth can you hear us?”

Everyone gasps, including Alya, when it snaps to yes. However, not all of them are convinced it’s real.

“Tell us something to prove you really are Hawkmoth.” 

The planchette moves faster than anyone can think, spelling out all the deep personal and embarrassing reasons some of them have been akumatized that they haven’t told anyone else. Hawkmoth moves it so fast they can barely read the words he’s trying to form, but the intended target sees them loud and clear. He hopes to torment them a bit, maybe have another one of them get upset enough to akumatize as soon as he’s finished with Alya. 

EVILLUSTRATOR YOU SQUEE-ED AND GIGGLED OVER MARINETTE FOR 4 F O U R HOURS WAITING FOR THE DATE

GAMER YOU FELT YOU ARE WORTHLESS AND EVERYONE PRETENDS YOU AREN’T SO 

DARK CUPID YOU FELT YOU WILL NEVER FIND LOVE AND YOU’VE NEVER FELT LOVED, EVEN BY YOUR FAMILY

REFLEKTA, YOUR AKUMATIZATION IS THE ONLY REASON YOU DIDN’T —

“Stop stop! We get it, we believe you!”Juleka yells and Hawkmoth is satisfied with the uneasiness that is now in the room and stops. Rose goes next to shift attention away from Juleka, “So Hawkmoth, what is—“ 

NO

A Q FOR A Q

WHY DO YOU REFUSE TO GIVE UP THE MIRACULOUS

Marinette is honestly a bit miffed at the question “Because you’re evil! You’ve done nothing but attack Paris since you got here!” 

YOU CAN END MY TERROR WITH ONE ACT

“‘End your terror’?” She scoffs “As if, you obviously would only use my miraculous to create even more chaos." 

PARIS ONLY CONTINUES TO BE ATTACKED DUE TO YOUR SELFISHNESS

“Hawkmoth.” Adrien pipes up, “Why would giving you the miraculous stop you? What do plan to use them for?”. 

Hawkmoth is caught off guard by the question. No one has ever really asked him why he is doing this -- a necessary evil in his eyes -- they just assume he is simply evil, it’s a bit insulting and infuriating really. He’s a bit proud and a little happy that his own son is using his brain and may even sympathize with him! 

However, what is he to say? ‘My wife used a broken miraculous and started dying from it so I keep her on life support in my basement and told everyone she ran off so can I need the miraculous to save her life oh yeah also it requires a giant sacrifice oh yeah also I’m famous fashion designer Gabriel Agreste and oh yeah also Adrien there is my son’. 

AN ANSWER FOR ANOTHER TIME 

Hawkmoth doesn’t give them the satisfaction of destroying his akuma (plus those butterflies take forever to grow man, thats why he can’t just send out villain after villain after each defeat or else he’d run out and be defenseless). He just revokes and purifies it himself before Ladybug and the others can react. Ladybug isn’t exactly sure whether she gained or lost something having this talk with him. 

[hcpefulmarshmallow]

You guys, I wanna say a thing and it’s completely irrelevant to anything at all but it has been bothering me for just the longest time and I need to say it. 

 So you know that trope of superheroes working to keep their secret identity secret from everyone all the time always? It’s dumb and makes no sense after a moment’s thought. Hear me out. 

 I get keeping it secret from villains and society at large, but why wouldn’t you tell your closest friends and family? Sure there’s the chance somebody close to you will betray you, but you know what happens even more than that in superhero stories? The villain learns the hero’s identity anyway. I mean, if Doctor Evil McBad is going to inevitably capture your sweet, precious Mary Sue Jane, she ought to know what’s going on, right? If she doesn’t know who you are, then this random supervillain randomly blowing up her house and demanding information on Captain Spiderbat is gonna be hella confusing and traumatising. At least if she knows the truth, she is more knowledgeable about the situation, and more capable of fighting back. Plus, she’ll know not to say things that accidentally implicate you. Also, when you have the inevitable subplot where you have to miss out on her big Photoart gallery date opening EventTM because you gotta save the world, she’ll know why and presumably understand. I mean, it’s kinda wild how many superhero narratives frame this situation, you know? Captain Spiderbat misses MSJ’s Big Event so big it needs capital letters, and the story always pivots to be about, “Oh woe is Mild Mannered Alter Ego, doesn’t she know he was only doing what’s right?” Like, no....no, she doesn’t. That’s my point. 

 Anyway, you know what superhero had his shit together? Danny Phantom. No really. 

 Slight spoilers but also the show wrapped up in 2007, wyd?

 For the uninitiated, here’s what you need to know: Danny Fenton was just 14 when his parents, a couple of ghost-hating ghost hunters, built a very strange machine. He stepped inside, became half-ghost, and along with it found himself with a set of superpowers. He had snow white hair and glowing green eyes, he could walk through walls, disappear and fly he was much more unique than the other guys. After a month of fumbling with these powers, too scared to tell his ghost-hating ghost hunting parents what had happened, he decides to become the titular Danny Phantom, and save his hometown, and sometimes the world, from evil ghosts. 

 Many of these ghosts either know or come to learn his secret identity regardless. He tries to keep it secret, but word gets ‘round in the ghost zone, you know? But alongside his ghost enemies, Danny has a serious publicity issue. Half the town ends up hating him, and again, he lives with ghost-hating ghost hunters. He does keep his identity a secret as best as he can, revealing it to the world at large in the final episode (and once a while prior, but that was macguffin Thanos Snapped away. No really, there was a reality-altering glove with gems and everything. There was also another time, but some Time Lord fixed that all up.)

 But you know who he never keeps his powers from? His best friends, Tucker and Sam. Admittedly they were there when he got his powers, but he never hid anything from them after that. They knew who Danny Phantom was, who his enemies were, and fought by his side - honestly, saving his butt as much as he saved theirs. As Danny went from being an awkward teen to a kickbutt superhero, Tucker and Sam trained to become the best ghost hunters in the world. (Again, really. There’s an episodes where “The BEst Ghost Hunters In Teh World!!1!” show up, and Tucker and Sam were more efficient than all of them combined.) Being closer to Danny than everyone else they are frequently put in danger, but they have the knowledge and skillset to defend not only themselves, but the whole town. And sometimes, their superhero.

 Oh, I am leaving out one person, too: Jazz. Danny’s older sister who starts off the series totally unaware of what’s happening with her brother, but finds out by accident later on. Their parents are good people, but usually so caught up in their ghost hating and ghost catching, they don’t see what’s going on with their kids. Jazz recognises something’s up, and spends a lot of her time trying to help Danny, despite not knowing what he’s going through. When Jazz figures it out, she decides not to tell Danny she knows, and instead, supports him from the sidelines and lets him come out when he’s ready. (Man, there’s so much queer coding in this show, good grief. Anyway.) 

 Behind his back, Jazz begins training, paying as much attention to her physical skills now as her intellectual ones. She defends Danny and covers for him at home, making his life much easier. Even telling her ghost-hating parents to their faces that Danny Phantom is a good guy and keeping a scrapbook of his achievements. And when the truth finally comes out, Danny doesn’t wholly reject her input. There are some serious teething problems for an episode as Jazz becomes overbearing at first, but eventually they settle into a comfortable place where she can help whenever needed, and defend herself when she’s attacked. Unlike the beginning of the series when she didn’t even believe ghosts existed, Jazz has developed into someone who is not only formidable in her own right, but is also invaluable to Danny. 

 Tl;dr: if you’re looking into the business of leaping over buildings in a single bound or punching meteors out of the sky, maybe tell your loved ones where you’re going. It’s just polite.

[lamentalia]

Amelia - Chapter 5 - Revised Part 2 and Part 3

After a few minutes sitting back on the bed and another two cupfuls of water, Amelia feels more like herself again. Katya explains that sometimes stress can cause the horrible feeling of imminent death that Amelia had just experienced and it’s supposedly not all that uncommon. Amelia wouldn't believe it if it hadn't just happened to her. Still, Mattie's absence is troubling in a way she's never had to consider before.

Lovino has pulled the chair by the door up to the side of the bed and Katya has returned to her seat on the other side of it. Natalya has taken to sitting in the open window, watching nothing in particular happen outside.

"Better?" Katya asks, taking the empty cup back from Amelia.

"Yeah... Thanks." Amelia replies unable to hide her embarrassment. Thankfully Lovino restarts the conversation before the silence drags on too long.

"You were saying that you and your brother were attacked?" he says and Amelia nods, latching on to the subject.

"Yeah. We were traveling to Ransen and we had to sneak through some unfriendly territory. We almost got through it but someone must have spotted us because a whole bunch of cats came out at us when we hit the river up there… maybe I fell in somehow?"

"Where did this happen?"

"You know the village set up at the foot of the mountains up in the northwest?"

Instead of rising, Lovino’s eyebrows fall even farther and his eyes widen below them.

"Karo? Where the hell were you coming from that you needed to go through Karo to get to Ransen?"

" Uh... farther north of there?"

"North??” Lovino’s bafflement is starting to look a bit like anger. “There's nothing north of Karo except cursed lands! What were you even doing up there!?” Amelia returns a confused gaze of her own. This is the first time she’s ever heard such a thing about her birthplace! She blinks a couple of times, waiting to see if he’s being serious but no one’s laughing.

"...Well, that's where our home is." Amelia says slowly. “Uh. Was, I guess. We grew up near the coast there but we had to leave recently because of the Void.” Lovino seems to be unable to form a response to this, with his mouth hanging open as it is, so Katya takes the opportunity to join in the conversation.

“I do not know this place. What is it that make these lands cursed?” She asks Amelia, who can only return a shrug. If it’s cursed, it’s nothing she knows about. Lovino takes a few short moments to process before he continues.

“I’m sorry… I didn’t realize anyone lived up there. I admit, I’ve only heard rumors about it, but they’re widely believed. Cats don’t come and go there very often.” He looks mildly ashamed of himself for insulting her homeland and Amelia smiles at him, appreciating the sentiment.

“Nah, and you’re not totally wrong. As far as I know, Mattie and I were the only ones living up there and this is the first time we’ve been so far away from it. We didn’t exactly get a great number of visitors, either.” The thought of rumors about her home being widespread tickles something curious inside her. “Why do cats think it’s cursed?”

“Something about a witch living there who cursed it to be overrun with monsters in order to keep cats out.” Lovino replies, shrugging. “So much for that story, I guess.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know about a witch, but there’s plenty of monsters up there! Even though there were no other cats near our territory, Mattie and I still had to keep up regular patrols just to keep their numbers in line.” Amelia says with a grin. Proud memories of her and her brother’s exploits bubble up in her heart. This time both Katya and Lovino stare at her slack-jawed. Which is all well and good, but she’s now reminded that her first priority is figuring out how to find Mattie. “Yeah, so… anyway. The Void cut off a direct route to Ransen and forced us to pass through… Karo, was it? Something was really… off about those cats, and there was… something there.”

Amelia remembers the chills she felt from the eerie, feral energy the cats exuded, the heart-stopping vision of absolute blackness forming the outline of a standing body. A ghost of those chills raises the hair on her neck and arms. Lovino leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees.

“I’m aware of the situation up there.” He says, as if relieving Amelia of the necessity of explaining the horror she witnessed. She is grateful for it and she nods at him to show it. Katya looks curious but Lovino continues before she can question it. “So, you and your brother crossed through their territories, made it to the river and then you were attacked. What else?”

Amelia sighs, looking down into her lap. She curls her tail around herself and takes hold of it. (It’s tangled, she notices. She’ll have to brush it tonight.) “I don’t know.” She says finally. “I remember trying to get back to Mattie’s side after they separated us, but then I bumped into something… and then I blacked out.”

A concerned look crosses Katya’s face. “Excuse me, dear.” She says and leans across the bed to gently hold Amelia’s face and run her other hand through Amelia’s hair and over her scalp. Amelia holds very still, unsure of what this is about, but Katya finishes her inspection soon enough. “Hm. As I thought, there is nothing. It is strange that this would happen if you have no head injury.”

“Really?” Amelia looks up at Katya, surprised.

“Katya knows a lot about injuries and healing.” Lovino explains before pressing on. “So, you don’t remember anything else?”

“No.” Amelia shakes her head. “I mean. I had a nightmare after that, but when I woke up… well, I saw you and then immediately conked out again, but then I woke up here and that’s all I’ve got. If it wasn’t Mattie that got me out of there, I have no idea how else I could have…”

Amelia watches as Katya retrieves a small book from the side table and writes some notes in it with a stick of charcoal. Amelia’s about to ask what’s up but Lovino speaks up again.

“What can you tell me about your brother? How do you think he would have acted?”

“Oh, uh. Mattie… Matthew, is my twin brother. He’s bigger than me, but we look a lot alike. You know, blond wavy hair, long whitish fur. And marks under his eyes, kinda like yours Katya, except under both eyes.” She points and moves her fingertip across both of her cheeks. “Mattie’s way more rational than I am but I wouldn’t put it past him to do something really stupid to keep me safe.” She doesn’t let this thought sink in too deep. Mattie is definitely alive somewhere, the alternative is simply unthinkable, but she can only hope he’s also ok. What if he’d been knocked out too? What if he ended up in the river like she did? … What if he didn’t?

“Alright.” Lovino says, standing from the chair. “I’ll see what I can find.”

Amelia’s heart leaps. “Oh! I’ll—”

“You should stay here and recover.” He cuts her off firmly, but not unkindly. Amelia frowns at him but she knows that she’s not going anywhere far in her condition. “I know the area and I can cover more ground by myself. Plus I’ll be able to ask around.”

Lovino turns to leave and Amelia, fumbling, catches his shirt before he’s able to walk away. He stops and looks back at her quizzically.

“Hey, uh…” She says, faltering when she realizes she can’t really put her feelings into words. So instead she pulls him into a hug. She’s still short and sitting and he’s standing so she can’t reach his shoulder for a proper exchange, but his abdomen is good enough, she thinks while bumping her head into it. After a moment of composing herself enough to talk, she mumbles, “Thanks.”

He’s gone very still and rigid and it takes him a long time to reply with a strangled “Yeah. Sure.” He detaches himself carefully, gingerly grasping Amelia’s arms from his back and placing them back at her side. And with that he crab walks out the door, closing the door behind him. Amelia watches all this with rapt curiosity, then turns back to Katya.

“Did I do something wrong?” She asks. She’s lived alone with her brother for a long time with only visits from close friends… Maybe she doesn’t actually know all that much about greeting unfamiliar cats.

She sees that Katya is once again trying desperately not to laugh behind her hands. But Katya shakes her head.

“Well… No, I think not.” She says amidst her giggling. “It is rare for cats to be so forthcoming with strangers but it is not bad. Lovino has, ah… strong personal rule to never touch too familiarly here at Sanctuary.”

“Why’s that?” Amelia asks but Natalya interrupts suddenly. Amelia had forgotten she was even there!

“I will call when dinner is ready, Katyusha.” She says plainly before jumping out the window, not waiting for a response. Amelia gives Katya another uneasy look, but she only holds a knowing gleam in her eye.

“Do not worry, I think she likes you. This is unusual. Very auspicious!” Katya says conspiratorially. Well… she would know her sister best, Amelia guesses, but it sure doesn’t seem that way. Katya continues, “Amelia, you have grown up without village, yes?”

Amelia nods.

“And your parents?”

“Um. I never knew our dad and mom died when we were little.”

“Oh…?” Katya gives her an expression that looks halfway condoling and halfway curious.

“We were lucky and someone stumbled across us not long after that.” Amelia explains, “He taught us how to survive up there and he visited us a lot after that!”

This seems to explain enough for Katya to continue.

“I see. Then I think you do not have very much contact with other cats. You are aware of Sickness?” Amelia nods again. “And you know that we who have female body are most in danger and our numbers have become so few it threatens entire ribika race, yes?”

This, too, Amelia knows. Gilbert, Ludwig, Tino and Sven have all talked about it and stressed the importance of Amelia keeping herself far away from the Void. In retrospect, its not so strange that Mattie developed such a strong complex, but being perfectly healthy and, as Ludwig put it, “absurdly robust,” Amelia never grasped the concept very well. Why the heck should she be more susceptible anyway? Katya seems to pick up on her complicated feelings.

“Well… you may not see effect where you live, but near Ransen we do not talk with strangers. We do not even walk outside where other cats are. It is too dangerous these days.” Katya says. And, as if to counter Amelia’s obvious bafflement, she adds, “It is not this way everywhere, of course! Some villages honor queens as equals to chief because they are precious! It is this way where I am from.”

There are so many concepts here that confuse her, Amelia can’t decide which to respond to first so she is silent for a moment to process them.

“Wait! I thought Ransen is the only place where the Void hasn’t reached yet. Why would it be dangerous?”

Katya’s expression looks complicated and sort of sad, not unlike the one Mattie had when he’d come to suggest they leave home.

“Amelia, most cats are good, normal cats. Lovino is unusually good cat. He helps us stay hidden here in safe place, far from Void and Sickness. But some cats are… ah… They want to hurt other cats.” Amelia nods. She has dispatched a handful of these. “Since Ransen is safe from Void, many, many cats gather together. When many cats gather, bad cats also gather and cause more trouble. And, since females are precious, we are favored target for bad cats who want profit. Does this make sense?”

“Ohh, ok.” Amelia says, finally picking up the point Katya is trying to make. “So, since there are so many cats in Ransen, it’s more dangerous because there are more jerks hanging around. I guess it’s harder to fight all of them if they’re all working together?”

“Yes!” Katya says, smiling once again. “Maybe they do not all work together, but that is gist of problem we have. This is why we stay in Sanctuary. It is also why we work hard to keep secret. Will you help us to keep our Sanctuary secret, Amelia?”

Amelia is surprised at how slow she’s been to catch on.

“Oh, gosh, of course!” She gushes just a bit, accidentally. “I wouldn’t let any bad guys anywhere near such an important place!”

“I am glad to hear it.” Katya says. “We can begin with this. I will explain to you important information about Sanctuary, yes?”

★ Part 3 ★

After that, Katya began to explain how this two-cane’s ruin is hidden behind a waterfall and an ancient, half-collapsed sinkhole, and that it belongs to Lovino and his brother Feliciano. (Katya says that Feliciano is busy cooking dinner and she will be meeting him and the rest of the house soon enough. And the rest of the house is all female!!)

Years ago, when Lovino and Feliciano learned about the increased breakouts of the Sickness, they went looking for some kitten-hood molly friends of theirs to make sure they were ok. This evolved into taking in any molly cats, or “queens,” who wanted shelter. Amelia deduces from context that “queen” does not refer to royalty, but seems to be a term specifically for an adult female cat. It is not a meaning she’d ever read in any of her books, at least not that she remembers, and certainly not one she’d heard in conversation before now.

Later, the brothers took in younger mollies, too, when the population started to plummet and it became dangerous for them simply by virtue of being a “rarity.” Amelia is not much of a collector, but Mattie is, so she’s familiar with the concept. She’s not sure why someone would want to kidnap and fight over rare things (and cats!?) just to have them, but she knows it happens and it is irksome to say the least! Do they really not understand the inconvenience it puts on a fellow cat??

She supposes that’s what all those bounty hunters were on about when they got a look at her back home. She knew they were up to no good to begin with, but now that she knows the context, Amelia’s quite sure she’ll be coming down a lot harder on these adversaries in future.

It isn’t much longer before they hear a knock at the door.

“Come in!” Katya calls. The door opens to reveal a fairly harassed looking Natalya and two new cats looking in over her shoulders with curious excitement.

“Katyusha, I am collecting you. These two insisted on bringing this one’s dinner to her room. They will keep her company, so you should come with me and rest.”

“Oh…!” Katya looks surprised and glances at Amelia, but Amelia has just realized that Katya must have been on alert for a good portion of the day while taking care of her. She gives Katya a nod and a smile. “All right then. I will be back to check on you later, Amelia. Enjoy your dinner!”

Amelia watches as Katya follows Natalya and sees that there are even more curious faces lingering outside her door. Most of them look so much… softer (like Katya and Natalya, like her own reflection in a pool of water) than she’s used to seeing.

“No way, you’re gonna, like, leave without dishing?” Amelia hears from the hallway.

“Yes.” Replies Natalya’s dangerous voice before it leaves the doorway.

One of the cats, who had sidled in past Natalya, walks over to Amelia carrying a tray of something steaming.

“Good evening! Lovi tells me your name is Amelia?” The cat says with an accent like Lovino’s, though his demeanor is much more buoyant. Amelia sees a reddish brown shade of hair and a familiar looking flyaway curl. He looks so much like Lovino it’s hard to mistake him. This must be Feliciano, she thinks, remembering her conversation with Katya.

“Yup!” Amelia says. The cat places the bed-tray beside her and her eyes nearly fall out of their sockets. “Wuh-WOW—” she covers her mouth (she sort of accidentally shouted, there.)

“This is for me…?” Is all she can say. She’s never seen such a meal in her life, and the aroma. Meat and sauce and vegetables and things she’s never even seen before. It’s been so long since Mattie and she had had anything more than nuts and grass and dried fruit to eat that seeing and smelling something so scandalously appetizing is actually making her eyes water, not to speak of her mouth. Oh… Oh, she wishes Mattie were here…

Amelia sniffs and looks back up through blurry eyes. The second cat, a tall blonde with green eyes, must have closed the door to the room and come to stand with the first. Amelia sees the excited, conspiratorial smiles slipping off of both their faces as they realize she is crying.

“Ooohh nooo, I’m sorry! Do you not like pasta??” Says Feliciano, waving his hands about in distress. “No, that can’t be right, maybe you don’t eat meat? It’s not as popular these days…” Amelia shakes her head and rubs her eyes, unable to respond. The second cat pats Feliciano on the head.

“Feli, don’t worry, I’m sure she likes it.” She says, “Amelia, take your time. My name is Emmaline; this is Feliciano.” She gestures to him. “We can leave you be if you need some time to yourself?”

“No…!” She sniffs loudly and shakes her head again. That’s probably the last thing she wants right now. She takes a couple of deep breaths. “No… I’m ok.”

Emmaline sits down in the chair Lovino abandoned over an hour ago and Feliciano sits on the side of the bed. He seems to be a lot more comfortable here than his brother was.

“Then, you should eat. You will be wonderful.” Emmaline says, lifting the tray and setting it across Amelia’s lap. Feliciano picks up the fork and hands it to her.

“I promise it is very good! Lovino made the sauce tonight!”

Amelia holds the fork for a moment, feeling as though their eyes are watching her rather closely, but she is, in fact, starving, and she’s never turned down a meal before, regardless of how spectacular it is. She digs in.

It takes another full minute or two before she stops crying again.

★End Chapter 5★ A/N: I made some significant enough additions, I thought I should post up Part 2 again along with Part 3. Nice job calling Belgium, anon. xD 

As always!! Comments and critique are welcome! Thank you for reading! 

[maddie-grove]

The Stark Romance Saga--Book #3: A Fire in Winter

Previous Installments: Loved I Not Honor More (Book #1, Robb Stark/Jeyne Westerling), The Iron Scoundrel (Book #2, Theon Greyjoy/Asha “Not His Sister in This Universe” Harlaw), and Kissing the Kingslayer (Book #2.5, Catelyn Stark/Jaime Lannister).

The Style

Sweeping old-school Susannah Leigh or Jennifer Wilde, but less offensive.

The Leads

Jon Snow, 20 years old, rising star in the Night’s Watch and (HE THOUGHT!) Lord Ned Stark’s illegitimate son. Tries very hard to be good and never admit to himself that he wants anything that the Night’s Watch can’t give him. Secretly full of hurt feelings and pent-up sexual energy, but he’s hoping to wear himself out with fighting, ranging, and Wall-maintenance for the rest of his life so he’ll never have to deal with it. Has a bad-ass albino wolf-dog, Ghost.

Ygritte, 23 years old, a wildling spearwife who longs for unity among the Free Folk and an end to the Others. Fiercely proud and righteously angry with the “kneelers” who have trapped her and her people beyond the Wall. Otherwise has a friendly and mischievous nature. Fond of archery, music, and pretty lads. Quietly grieving for family and clan members lost to the Others. Will never admit that her loss and displacement has made her feel lonely.

The Prologue

The confrontation between Jon and Catelyn at Bran’s bedside, largely unchanged. Jon, half-determined to prove himself in the Night’s Watch and half-resentful that all the adults responsible for him agreed so swiftly that he should join, visits his comatose half-brother despite his reluctance to anger Catelyn. He says goodbye to Bran and tries to offer sympathy to Catelyn, only to be harshly rebuffed. (Catelyn probably just snaps at him to get out, as in the show, rather than offer up the book’s crueler, more deliberate “it should have been you.”) He also reflects on how much he’s going to miss his dad and siblings.

The Set-Up

Not that different from canon, except for the part where she dies. Jon, marginally wiser and older, is on a dangerous mission in the Skirling Pass with Qhorin Halfhand, grizzled old Night’s Watch veteran. Jon reflects a bit about how he came to this literal and metaphorical pass (basically, he learned not to be a thoughtless dick to his smallfolk peers, plus it turns out White Walkers are real). Then Ygritte and her raiding party descend upon Jon and Qhorin. Jon manages to capture her, but they have a Moment and he lets her go instead of killing her. Later, he and Qhorin are surrounded by the Free Folk (including Ygritte, who personally captures him right back).  As per the mission, Jon kills Qhorin and pretends to join the Free Folk. Despite their differences and the complicated situation, Jon and Ygritte find themselves liking each other. They’re sleeping under the same furs at night, and one thing leads to another. (The consent issues in the book might still fly in a romance novel today, but I found it unnecessarily unpleasant and complicated even in ASOIAF; didn’t Jon have enough painful issues around sex with the bastard stigma?) They keep on doing it, and the cave scene happens verbatim. 

Then comes the raid on the Gift, where the wildlings attack an old man and Jon, horrified, comes to his defense. Having blown his cover, he rides back to the wall, full of arrows and regret. Ygritte consequently realizes that Jon turned his cloak on her and vows to hate him forever.

And that’s when things get weird. 

The Middle 

After making it back to the Wall and recovering from his injuries, Jon finds himself in another pickle: some of the senior members of the Night’s Watch  want him executed for killing Qhorin and doin’ it with a wildling. Despite Maester Aemon’s arguments on his behalf, things aren’t looking too good for Jon...until he’s kidnapped and thrown on a ship in the dead of night by some mysterious Essosi dudes who turn out to be Unsullied. One of the Unsullied (a Common-Tongue-speaking fellow who named himself Drogon the Human after one of the instruments of his freedom) eventually explains that Jon is secretly the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark. It turns out that Daenerys Targaryen left Slaver’s Bay in the hands of the former slaves (who are doing quite nicely, as they had a plan in place that only needed some judicious use of dragons to work) and sailed to her birthplace of Dragonstone, where her people discovered Rhaegar’s secret diary (sample passage: “I’m going to use dishonest means to get fifteen-year-old Lyanna Stark to run away and have PROPHECY BABIES with me!”). Now Daenerys wants an alliance between her forces and the North...and how better to do that than to marry the half-Northern, half-Targaryen Jon Snow?

Jon’s not so sure. He’s going through a crisis, feeling undermined in his Northern identity and family relationships but definitely not feeling like a Targaryen either. He’s doubts that his illegitimate Targaryen half brings anything to the table politically, partly because he doesn’t share Daenerys’s view that Westeros wants a Targaryen restoration. Finally, although Daenerys is lovely and charming and kind and brave, he can’t feel anything romantic for her...and it’s not just because she’s his aunt, which is kind of weird. No, he also misses Ygritte, and it kills him that he’ll never see her again. After Daenerys guarantees that she’ll help all his family members and the smallfolk and the wildlings, though, he knows marriage is the best choice. Because nothing will get them good PR like marrying in the Sept of Baelor, they agree to postpone the wedding until after they take King’s Landing.

Meanwhile, Ygritte has been having a rough time. After surviving the Battle of the Ice, she and a small band of Free Folk try to eke out a living north of the Wall while planning their next move. (Without Jon’s leadership, the Free Folk never have the option to go south.) Her group is attacked by White Walkers and becomes even smaller. Heartbroken and lonelier than ever, Ygritte is at a loss...until she realizes that she’s pregnant. At first she feels happy, then pissed off about being happy, then worried how she’s going to raise a child in this frozen horror show. At last, she swallows her pride and resolves to go see Jon at the Wall. Obviously he doesn’t love her, but she figures he’ll feel obligated to help her, the baby, and maybe even the Free Folk as a whole. Unfortunately, when she sneaks into Castle Black, she finds out that Jon mysteriously disappeared right before he was supposed to be executed. “Oh, fuck, no,” she says, but she’s not sure what to do other than go to Winterfell and inform his family that some bullshit is happening. 

During Ygritte’s journey to Winterfell, Daenerys and her army successfully take King’s Landing. I won’t go into details, but the victory is just difficult enough to keep the battle from being anticlimactic. It happens just after Tyrion’s escape from King’s Landing, so the only remaining Lannisters are Cersei, Tommen, and Kevan. (Jaime is, at Catelyn’s secret request, in the Riverlands searchng for Arya.) Kevan dies in battle; Cersei and Tommen disappear mysteriously. The Tyrells and most of the other families shrug and side with Daenerys fairly quickly, because she has dragons. The smallfolk are like, “Huh, well, maybe she won’t be a volatile sadist like Joffrey; after all, most of the Targaryens weren’t like Aerys.” Their doubts are further assuaged when Daenerys’s policies turn out to be relatively egalitarian. Jon is happily reunited with Sansa (more about her later), even though they weren’t super-close as children, but is heartbroken to find no sign of Arya. He and Daenerys begin to make wedding plans.

Ygritte gets to Winterfell and is greeted by sympathetic new mom Jeyne Westerling and a moody, troubled Bran. (Robb and Catelyn are fighting in the Riverlands again; Rickon’s actually doing swell for once.) They’re both happy to offer a home to their unborn niece/nephew and its mother; Bran even takes her reports of the White Walkers seriously and starts to confer with the other bannermen as the Stark in Winterfell. Yet Ygritte isn’t anywhere near happy. Seeing Jon’s home has made her see how different their worlds are, plus she’s angry and hurt that he was off marrying his aunt while she thought he was dead. She’s about to head back north when Bran and Jeyne persuade her that Jon would never truly want to marry his aunt and sometimes you just to risk everything for love, respectively. Ygritte realizes they’re right and rides hell-for-leather to King’s Landing.

The Conclusion

The wedding’s about to happen. Sansa, initially enchanted by her secretly royal half-brother’s imminent marriage to a beautiful young queen, senses that all is not well and asks Jon if he really wants to go through with it. He says no, but he has to go through with it because it’s his duty and he’ll lose what little honor he has if he backs out. Sansa realizes that his motives are all wrapped up in bastard stigma and talks about how she used to think that everyone, including herself, would be okay if they just did what society told them to do, but then she discovered that the world was wrong. Her speech affects Jon, but not enough for him to call off the wedding so late...until Ygritte appears on the steps of the Sept of Baelor, out of breath and vocally angry with him for leaving her behind. 

“I’m sorry,” he tells Daenerys, who nods in a gracious and dignified manner. She’s secretly relieved that she doesn’t have to make a third political marriage and can just concentrate on ruling for a while (plus banging Daario Naharis on the sly). 

Then Jon tells Ygritte everything he’s learned: he thought he was wrong to love her and break his vows, but instead he was wrong to leave her. He never dared to hope she would want him back, but if she’s come all this way, maybe she would be willing to marry him? 

“You’re only saying that because I’m pregnant!” Ygritte shouts. Then she goes on for a little while about his precious duty and precious honor.

“You’re pregnant?!” Jon finally interrupts.

“Wait, what?” says Ygritte. But she’s convinced, finally, that he meant what he said. Otherwise, why would he give up marrying Daenerys in such a publicly embarassing way? 

Daenerys gives a hastily improvised speech about how Jon and Ygritte’s marriage symbolizes unity between all different types of people in Westeros. The crowd is like, “huh,” but the wine is flowing pretty freely and it’s something to talk about. 

Jon and Ygritte head north the next day, Sansa in tow, and are joyously reunited with Bran, Rickon, Jeyne, Robb, and the rest of the Winterfell household. (Theon and Asha send them a pineapple from the Summer Islands for the wedding, but it’s probably called something stupid like a spineapple.) In private, Catelyn stiffly thanks Jon for bringing back Sansa and apologizes for being unkind to him as a child; it doesn’t really change the past, but he can appreciate it for what it is. Jon and Ygritte are married in the Godswood. Afterwards, there’s a feast. It’s not entirely a happy occasion, though, because they all feel the absence of Arya deeply. A place is set for her at the table, though, in hopes that one day she’ll come home.

The Epilogue

Jon and Ygritte are living together at the Wall. Reforms have been made to the Night’s Watch, partly thanks to Daenerys’s unconventional views and partly thanks to the North’s commitment to fighting the White Walkers. Members can now enlist for ten-year shifts, not just for life; women can join; and, perhaps most pertinently, members can marry!!! So Jon goes down on Ygritte and it’s 100% legit.

Subplots

Sansa goes through most of her A Storm of Swords plot. Now released from her betrothal with Joffrey, she thinks she’s found allies in the Tyrells; however, her planned escape via marriage to Willas Tyrell is scotched when she and Tyrion Lannister are forced to marry by Tywin. Under the circumstances, she cannot love him, yet she appreciates his decency towards her and feels sorry for him because his family is cruel to him. When Joffrey dies, she and Tyrion are both arrested, leaving her to wonder whether he left her to share the blame for the crime; she feels betrayed, somehow, by the possibility. (Littlefinger tried to get her out, but there was a hitch in the plan, so he shrugged and sailed to the Vale without her.) She’s overjoyed to be returned to her family, yet she feels like she doesn’t quite fit with them after her experiences.

“Arry,” still suffering from amnesia and now calling herself “Nan” (short for Nymeria), has escaped from Harrenhal with her friends Gendry and Hot Pie. They join up with the Brotherhood without Banners, where she finds some small measure of peace. However, she’s still massively traumatized and troubled by her lack of identity. It becomes less painful, eventually, to stop wondering who she was and move on with her life. (Let’s assume that Beric Dondarrion et al never got a good enough look at her in King’s Landing to identify her.) At one point, Sandor Clegane tries to kidnap her, insisting that she’s Arya Stark, but she thinks he has worse intentions than ransoming her and manages to run back to the Brotherhood. 

Bran, also traumatized by the events of The Iron Scoundrel, continues to have troubling psychic visions. Taking action against the White Walkers as the Stark in Winterfell helps, but he still struggles with feelings of helplessness and isolation. Also, he knows his mom is secretly in love with Jaime Lannister and understandably thinks that’s really fucked up.

Sam and Gilly fall in love as they journey from Craster’s Keep to the Nightfort and then try to deal with all the crazy shit happening at Castle Black. They get married once the Night’s Watch reforms take place (perhaps in the epilogue?) in a subsequent novella.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

tru like..........if youve got a looping environment outdoors then unless its pointed out in really obvious ways the player is just going to think it was a lack of effort....and when you do it indoors like p.t. its mostly going to be like "oh this is like pt" but if thats the only real similarity then its kind of like, yeah its unusual and you get that first moment of mild surprise but its not inherently scary. i guess it does have a slight inherent advantage towards building suspense in that, since you probably thoroughly explored the loop the first time around & would have no reason to do so again when finding out your environment is identical, you sort of have all your focus put towards keeping an eye out for any minute changes / anything to break the loop / just waiting for an attack or smthing since you know youre getting "used" to the environment and its supposedly safe each loop but for another thing, none of them really do the truly infinite loop of pt....like maybe it loops until you realize theres some task youre supposed to be doing, but so does pt and then youre still in the loop. unless you "die" and you enter the starting point room before reentering the loop. the freakin lore but yeah like, any single element could be copied from pt & be effectively transplanted into any horror game & still be scary....but really while a bunch of the individual scary bits were effective and pretty "new"/creative, its definitely the overall atmosphere that made pt such a big deal or ppl wouldve just been talking about the individual points and not the overall game. the looping environment is kind of an overall reflection of that whole atmosphere imo....its kind of creepily realistic in the first place and the simple L structure is good / giving you a slight "descent" and unsafe zone between making it through the door at the end with the danger at your back and the relative safety of reentering the loop, where the only danger in that section is noticing an atmospheric change. but anyways the fact that it loops = the whole overall kind of surreal/nightmare/dream rules that are still solidly tethered to this being a reality that can not only hurt you but operates under its own consistent rules. like its a fantastic balance of the dream reality where dissonance with how reality operates allows for a lot of eerieness but also sticking to some elements of straightforward "this is real reality", so that you can never really be sure which set of rules you should view the situation in? + the fact that really all the player is capable of doing is looking at things and eventually holding a flashlight, and thats not likely to be the case in a full game plus the atmosphere of how the game seems to treat the player, like growing more hostile but never exactly making it clear that the player specifically is being targeted as opposed to just being in a bad place at a bad time, like how in theory i think you can go completely unkilled by the game thru sheer luck or more likely knowing what you were supposed to be accomplishing and the later supposed rituals to keep you safe when all the baby sounds mean something and all.....but like, its never really knowing whats just creepy and whats dangerous and whats a reaction to your presence and whats just happening coz fuck it. like, the blood fridge. with it writhing around like something inside is bad enough, but even just hanging there is suspenseful what with the window having been smashed down earlier. oh and the figure just standing there looking down from the balcony. its like, is this a deadly ghost sighting? no. but fuck if who wants to turn their precious back on that nightmare anyways. or continue looking at it? the game really maintains such a tenuous balance in several ways that theres never any sense of safety or that you know whats going on or what any of the elements are going to do at any given time anyways the point is that a full length game is really not going to be able to evoke the same effect as pt just by having a similarly creepy radio or whatever, like, unless it entirely commits to that extremely specific atmosphere throughout. the point is always that not only should everyone have had pt forever but the actual silent hills game is a deep and eternal loss

[go-go-ghost-ship]

Ok,a couple people requested I post the stuff I wrote up about my thoughts on the current Gunnerkrigg pages, so here it is. Be warned it’s kind of ramble-y and sloppy and probably a bit repetitive at times, but I originally wrote this just because I couldn't stop thinking about it and needed to get it out of my head. So, here you go, and feel 100% welcome to talk to me about it, whether you agree or not.

(Be warned, it IS like 3 pages long lol)

Gunnerkrigg Court thoughts, March 10th 2017 Chapter 61: Page 13

ok I need to get these out so i stop thinking about it lol

i think this is a good conversation for the characters to have, and I think from Red’s perspective it does sort of make sense. However, I feel like Red’s complaints aren’t entirely accurate here? (Note: points 1 and 2 are basically one giant combined point but oh well) 1. She’s acting like Annie forced her friends to do this, as if they dont have any free will of their own. Now, the two fairies were last minute recruits for the mission, but the other four were all pretty personally invested in the mission. It wasn’t just Annie’s mission at this point; it was also Kat’s, and Smitty’s, and Parley’s. Most of them had pretty personal attachments to this mission as well; Parley after the whole Coward Heart incident, and Kat because of the whole Diego/creator angle. I can’t think of one for Smitty, but he likes to help people out and he’s a medium himself, I’m sure this was something he WANTED to do as well. And I keep forgetting Robot was there with them since he only showed up for a brief period of time, but obviously we all know he’s invested in Jeanne. They’ve all been planning this for years, and they knew the dangers. We don’t really know at this point how well Annie warned the fairies how dangerous it would be, but I’m sure she gave them some warning, plus they HAVE met Jeanne before back when they met Annie for the first time. Also, if we’re going to blame whoever got everyone else involved in the mission, then along that line of thinking the blame should be on the Psychopomps, who asked Annie (a CHILD) to help. 2. The others chose to participate, had been helping to plan this mission for YEARS, and most had personal investments in the mission: Yeah, maybe the others getting involved was Annie’s doing, but like I said, most of them had a personal investment in the mission, and they all CHOSE to participate. Plus, we’ve already had a chapter about how Annie shouldn’t keep everything to herself, and that it can be good to get other people’s help (her convo with Jones during the control tower arc). Maybe she should’ve told the adults, but like I’ll say in another point down below, the Court is the reason Jeanne is down there in the first place. To tell someone loyal to the Court would’ve compromised the whole mission, and I think everyone’s agreed that it’s not right for Jeanne to be trapped down there against her will. There are a couple people they could trust, like Kat’s parents, Jones, and Eglamore, but I doubt any of them would've been okay with the kids doing this. I guess you could argue about whether or not they should’ve done this whole mission in the first place, and maybe they shouldn’t have, but 1) this IS a story, and they’ve been setting this up for a while, of course they’re gonna do it lol, 2) they’re trying to do what they think is right, and although we don’t know what the consequences of freeing Jeanne are just yet, I think we can all agree that it wasn’t right or fair what the Court did to Jeanne 3. Red’s acting like Annie wasn’t taking the mission seriously or something, when RED was the one messing around the most. She wasn’t even invited along, she just came cause Ayilu went. Ayilu almost got stabbed in the face because Red was the one distracting her. I feel like part of the root of why she’s saying all this is because she might not have reapplied just how dangerous the mission was, even if they had tried to explain it to her beforehand. Knowing her personality, she comes across as the kind of person who doesn’t realize somethings dangerous until its happening. I do however like that she's bringing this up, as I don’t like the idea of the faeries being these complete naive idiots who would be completely fine being put in danger cause they never realize the seriousness of a satiation. 4. Annie focused on Jeanne because she was dangerous and to complete their mission: Red says Annie just left Smitty there to bleed to death, but 1) leading Jeanne into the aether was their whole mission, and that’s what she was doing, and 2) Jeanne was the whole reason they were in danger. By getting her out of the way as quickly as possible, she removed the danger from her friends. It’s hard to care for someone who’s injured while you’re still getting attacked. 5. Even if they had gotten Smitty to a doctor, there’s no guarantee they would’ve been able to save him, plus he would’ve had to go into surgery and would’ve taken a while to recover. With the Psychopomps power, it was a guaranteed save with zero recovery time and no permanent injuries. Red says Annie made him wait in pain, but the psychopomps method was easily the quickest way to get rid of both the pain and the injury. 6. The group prepared as well as they could have, they can’t account for everything that could happen: Red could try and argue that maybe they didn’t prepare well enough for the mission, but honestly? They were pretty well prepared. I’m not sure they could’ve been much more prepared than they were. They can’t account for everything that could’ve happened, they just had to prepare their best and do what they could. 7. Getting in trouble with the Court could’ve compromised ALL of their safeties: Red says Annie didn't want to get in trouble, and while I don’t doubt some of Annie’s reluctance to take Smitty to the doctor was rooted in selfish reasons, she’s not the only one who would’ve gotten in trouble. And knowing the Court, the people who TRAPPED JEANNE DOWN THERE in the first place, it would’ve been more than just a week of detention. They could’ve all gotten kicked out (including Red and Ayilu!), plus the court probably didn't want Jeanne to be removed. They might’ve chosen someone else to replace her, and that someone could’ve easily come from Annie’s group. We know how capable the Court is of making inhumane and unethical decisions. Yes, Smitty’s safety (and everyone else’s safety as well) was the most important thing to this mission, and compromising it in order to save someone was definitely something they should do. However, like I said, letting the Court find out probably would’ve compromised ALL of their safeties. 8. Ayilu needs to speak up: i also really want Ayilu to say something? Red’s the one getting angry on her behalf, while Ayilu’s standing RIGHT THERE. I feel like she needs to speak up on her view of things. She’s her own person, she doesn’t need Red to speak for her. I want her to say something, regardless of whether she’s going to defend or attack Annie. 9. Annie is a bit selfish, but she’s also been put on the spot: I DO feel like Annie’s not making as good of an argument that she could, which could be a result of being put on the spot, but it also kind of shows that she might’ve been making her decisions based more on selfish reasons that truly logical ones. Which I do think is a good thing to be called out on; even though I mostly agree with what she did I agree for different reasons that than the ones she’s giving, and if she was only thinking about herself in these situations then it could lead to her making selfish decisions that I DONT agree with and that are objectively bad decisions. Even though I don’t agree with everything Red’s saying, I do think this is good for Annie to hear. I just don’t want it to end like this, I want some legitimate rebuttal to Red’s points.

I dont want the conclusion for this chapter to be that Annie’s a perfect, flawless angel that did nothing wrong, but I ALSO don’t want it to be that the entire mission was Annie’s fault and that she did everything wrong and she’s completely selfish, etc. I want her to grow and learn from it, and for her to realize what was at stake here, but I don’t want her to walk away form it thinking that she’s a terrible person, or for the others to think she's a terrible person. This situation is more complex than just “Annie’s perfect vs Annie’s terrible”, y’know? She might not’ve made all the best decisions, but she tried her best, and yes she has flaws but so do all the other characters. I don’t want Annie to leave this conversation thinking that she should never ask others for help ever again.

Some added info after March 13th, Chapter 61: Page 14:

It was very dangerous, tough mission they were all taking part in, against a ghost who has literally killed not only multiple creatures, but multiple escorts of the dead. And they, a group of teenagers, managed to complete the mission (one that more powerful, adult creatures failed at) without anyone actually dying or anyone becoming permanently injured from it. I’d say they did a pretty damn good job, Red. - At least Annie did manage to point out that Parley was personally invested in facing Jeanne, but Red didn’t really react to it. -Annie…Kat’s been working with you on this whole Jeanne thing for as long as you have. She was invested in it just like you, and she’s your best friend who loves you with her whole heart. You’re really gonna believe that you forced her to do this now? (Though I understand that it’s more of a guilt/self-doubt sort of thing going on here) -Ayilu still hasn’t said anything?? -At the very least, it seems like Red isn’t really acting super mad (based on her body language and facial expressions on this a page) so hopefully this won’t turn into a big fight or anything -And again with the whole ‘this was only what YOU wanted Annie’ shtick. Nevermind the fact that she, a CHILD, was personally asked by the magical escorts of the dead to help with this, or the fact that her friends have been working with her on this for years, or the fact that she doesn’t personally get anything out of this and really mainly did it because she thought it was the right thing to do. Nope, this was entirely Annie’s fault. Geez.

I’ll just say as a last note that the more I think about what Red’s saying, the more I disagree with her. However, I’ve always enjoyed Tom’s stories, and I have faith in him as a writer, plus at this point we’re really only nearing the middle of the chapter, so I’m hopeful that Red’s viewpoint is going to get challenged eventually. I think once the others from the mission show up they’ll be able to offer a rebuttal to Red’s point of view. Anyway, feel free to talk to me about any of this! I’m always down to talk about Gunnerkrigg Court.

[deepseawritings]

Persona non grata

I didn’t exactly specify who the protagonist it in this one; it can either be Marked One or any other unlucky stalker.

Everyone hated him. It wasn’t exactly an exaggeration, he was friendless and every other stalker avoided him like the plague. Or tried to kill him.

It all began back in the rookie village, in Cordon. Thinking of earning some money to buy better equipment, he accepted one of Sidorovich’s missions. He was tasked with killing a so called ‘sales representative’. His PDA situated him in Cordon, close to the cross by the bandit’s camp, so he accepted.

He didn’t enjoy his trek across the area. He’d been chased by a pack of dogs, and when he sat down in the decrepit bus stop to catch his breath, some freaky rats had attacked him. The railroad embankment was controlled by the military or bandits posing as military, he wasn’t sure which. The only clear thing was that they liked shooting at people. He had to run away and in the process nearly got his legs ripped out in an anomaly. From then on, he wasted an incredible amount of bolts to get to his destination, paranoid as he was, but in the end he arrived more or less whole.

There were three stalkers camped in that location. One of them was his objective, but he wasn’t sure which one. What to do? He threw a grenade at them. This would solve the issue. With the three of them dead, he got to kill his mark with no witnesses left, and there would be no angry friends who could come after him in revenge. Nice. Plus, he now could loot their belongings. It had been a very profitable mission after all.

#

The blowout had caught him in the middle of nowhere. He ran around, desperately searching for some place to hide, he didn’t want to be outside during an emission... The only shelter to be found in miles was a derelict house far from the road. Not an ideal choice, it had too many holes on the roof, but it would do.

The thing was that he wasn’t the only one in search of a safe haven to hide during the blowout. Not even a full minute later, a group of bandits came rushing into the same house. With all the rumbling and the noise from the blowout, he didn’t notice he had company until he literally bumped into one of them. He killed the bandit, only to have a bunch of them rushing to him when they heard the gunshot. He fired at them blindly, running for his life and stumbling whenever the ground shook too hard. He found a ladder and climbed up, using his elevated position to shoot at the idiots who dared to go after him.

Once the emission ended and the world stopped looking like Hell itself, he slid down the ladder. The floor was littered with bodies. Wow, he was sort of amazed he survived against so many enemies! He spotted a fellow stalker amongst the corpses, a rookie he’d met on the village. He felt a slight pang of regret, thinking that maybe he’d killed a comrade. Such feeling vanished quickly. Death was a common happenstance in the Zone and he barely knew the man, so he didn’t care much.

#

Garbage was aptly named. The area was just a giant, lethal dumpster. The garbage piles were highly radioactive, but he was sure he’d seen an artifact in one of them. As a result, he’d gotten very sick very quickly, all for a simple Jellyfish. He only had one dose of anti radiation meds. Hoping it would suffice, he washed the pill down with a bottle of vodka. If he was going to die of radiation poisoning, at least the vodka would dull his senses. He did not die, but it was a close call. Some bandits saw him and decided to go greet him in their usual style. Thus he discovered that fighting bandits off while drunk was harder than he’d imagined. But he succeeded. He felt unstoppable now.

Shortly after, he received a message from some nearby loners requesting help against more bandits. To his alcohol addled mind that sounded good. He ran to help them with his shotgun at the ready. He went to meet his fellow stalkers and reassure them that he was here to help. It was a shame that in his rush he didn’t hear one of them shouting at him to put his weapon away. He planted himself in front of them, shotgun still in hand, and was promptly smacked upside the head with the barrel of a rifle. Ouch. He had no time to berate them for their extreme rudeness because the bandits were coming for them.

The ensuing fight was a disaster. The bandits surpassed them in number and had better weapons. The loners fell like flies and soon he was alone facing a those bastards. Somehow, he killed them all, though he didn’t remember much of it. He suspected grenades held a major role in his victory. Well, he helped kill the bandits as promised, even if there were no survivors to thank him. However, he would soon discover that wasn’t entirely true.  While looting the bodies he discovered one of the stalkers was still alive, gravely wounded but alive. He could use one of his medkits...

However, he recognised him as the one who’d smacked him in the head with the rifle. Besides, the man was at death’s doorstep already, better to let nature run its course. Or better yet, help nature run its course a little faster. He stabbed the wounded stalker, telling himself it was a mercy kill and that it was the right decision. Besides, the guy had been carrying a couple of different artifacts, those were good loot!

He was loaded with stuff to sell and could barely move. A trip back to Sidorovich was in order. On his way out of Garbage, someone shot at him from behind. He ducked behind a tree and blindly shot back with one of the Abakans he’d pilfered. A cry of pain announced that he shot accurately. He bandaged his bleeding arm before going to inspect the body. His now dead assailant seemed to be a rookie. Uh, he must have turned crazy. Maybe that was how zombiefied stalkers started? He made a mental note to ask about that back in the rookie village.

#

Just as he stepped into the rookie camp, about half of the stalker there snapped when they saw his face and started to attack him. What the hell? He wasn’t going to take it lying down, so he defended himself. Wolf didn’t appreciate him killing his men, and soon he also joined the hunt for his miserable hide. He was completely screwed, unless... Yeah, running for his life and hiding in the underground bunker sounded right.

He led his chasers on a pointless chase across the abandoned houses, managing to shake them off his trail, and then he sprinted to safety in a mad dash. He was panicking; what was he going to do? Then he remembered his motto in case of doubt, grenades are the solution. He sold all his hard earned loot to Sidorovich and used the money to buy a lot of grenades and medical supplies.

Back in the surface, he started throwing the grenades around like a possessed madman. It was an effective tactic. All his attackers died, along with the few stalkers that remained neutral during this madness. In fact, when he was done the rookie camp was a ghost village. Oh well, no strategy was perfect and he was still alive, so in his book that was a win.  Looking at the bright side, now everything in the camp was his property. He was going to get crazy rich in no time!

#

He was tired of roaming Cordon and Garbage. All the stalkers in the area were out to kill him, along with the bandits, and the military. And let’s not forget the wildlife, of course. He still didn’t know how, but he had acquired the reputation of a psychopath. It was preposterous! He only killed when his life was in danger; or when one of Sidorovich’s special tasks required it. Maybe it was time to move onto greener pastures. He’d heard that Dark Valley was an area teeming with opportunities.

#

Nope, just no. He didn’t want to even think about his trip to Dark Valley. He was never, ever going back there.

Ok, so everything had been going fine at first. He arrived, admired the view and even accepted to help that Duty guy with his bandit problem. Then he saw it. A swarm of hundreds of rats appeared on the horizon, running towards them at breakneck speed.

The rodents arrived like a squeaking tide of devastation. He barely had time to jump on a high rock before they started gnawing at the other stalker and the bandit. He threw a grenade at the sea of rats, killing only a few of them and the Dutyer. Didn’t matter, surely being eaten alive was worse, right? The rats closed in on his rock and now he couldn’t even throw another grenade at them without fear of blowing himself up. He fired at them with his Abakan and made them fall back just a bit. Then he jumped off the rock and ran away screaming like a frightened child. He ran all the way back to Garbage and then kept running until he collapsed from the effort.

He was still catching his breath after such marathon, when three stalkers resting by the side of the road saw him. They ran towards him, screaming bloody murder and shooting at him. This was getting annoyingly familiar. After dispatching them, he racked his brain for what to do now. Then a simple idea hit him like a ton of bricks: he could go to bar, the 100 Rads. Yes, he would go there, forget about what happened in Cordon and Garbage. It seemed the best place to start anew and forge himself a new reputation.

Unfortunately, the road to the bar was blocked by a Duty detail. They were not letting anyone pass. He was arguing with them to let him go through when wild boars attacked. The Duty guys requested his help to kill the boars, so of course he complied. Getting into Duty’s good graces could only benefit him. He shot at the beasts with his rifle, decided to kill as much of them as he could. He saw one of the Duty stalkers getting harassed by a boar and he fired at the beast until it was dead. The Dutyer didn’t like that one bit. With a scream of “That bitch shot me!” he turned all of his squadmates against him.

He was forced to kill them all. Fucking hell! On the bright side, there were no witnesses to this carnage. Alright, no one needed to know this. If anyone asked him, he would try to make it pass as a bandit attack.

#

The Bar area had a serious infestation of blind dogs and pseudo-dogs. He arrived running for his life, hoping the lookouts would help him. They did, thank goodness. He knew better than to try to help them though, he didn’t want a repeat of what happened with the other Duty squad.

A loner nearby had heard the commotion and came to help. Then he saw him and went mad, shooting at him instead of the mutants.  Oh shit, not again! It looked like his reputation had spread here as well, damn. He quickly killed the crazed stalker, an instinctive reaction by now. In hindsight, it was a grave mistake. The Duty guards didn’t like that and, once the mutants were dead, they turned against him as well.

His presence turned the otherwise peaceful area into a fucking bloodbath. He used all his ammo and all his grenades, but he survived. He was bleeding profusely and his armour was not serviceable anymore, but he survived. Sweet mother of god, he needed a drink.

The barkeep wasn’t very welcoming and berated him for his killing spree. He didn’t care anymore. He was too tired to summon the energy to reply something. After patching himself up, he bought some new gear. Another sunrise suit, for starters, also ammo and grenades for the Groza he looted from one of the corpses. And of course, as much vodka as he could drink without getting alcohol poisoning.

He sat outside, basking in the setting sun, and drank amidst a pile of corpses, pondering on what happened. All he wanted was to come here to rebuild his reputation, drink in company of someone who was alive for a change, place some bets in the arena... Now everyone was dead or out for his blood. Again. What had he ever done to deserve this?

Nevertheless, not all was lost. He knew there was another faction named Freedom, one that was enemies with Duty. Yes, he was going to join Freedom. They would probably be ecstatic that he had already killed so many Dutyers. Screw everything else, tomorrow he would go to the Army Warehouses and join Freedom.

#

The journey to the Army Warehouses wasn’t overly long, but it wasn’t an easy one. It started with yet another gunfight when he found another angry Duty contingent on the other side of the bar area. What a great way to start the day. He almost died a dozen of times by the time he crossed into the new territory, running away from the angry Duty higher-ups and dodging bullets. He was overstressed and twitchy, and shooting first and asking questions later was now an ingrained reflex. When he heard voices ahead on the road, he fired at them without thinking. Luckily for him, they turned out to be bandits. Thank God. That was fine, killing bandits was a public service, no one would be angry with him for that.

Later, further along the road, he found an old farmstead turned into a Duty camp. Knowing what kind of welcome to expect from them if they spotted him, he went in for the kill before he lost the element of surprise. Time to test those new grenades the Groza carried. Once everyone was dead, he looted their bodies because if you’re hated, at least reap some profit out of it. Also, he needed more ammo for his beloved Groza.

He could already see the walls surrounding the Freedom base. He was so close to his objective! With a renewed spring in his step, he continued ahead. Then he heard some noises coming from behind a rusted vehicle. His muscle memory acted for him and he fired. The bullets went through the decayed metal and something dropped to the ground with a foreboding sound.

It could have been a mutant, or a bandit, or a merc, or even a loner trying to kill him. But deep down, he feared the truth. With his anxiety spiking out of scale, he went to see what had he killed. It was a human body and yes, the corpse was wearing the Wind of Freedom suit. Shit. Maybe no one had noticed his slip?

A bullet embedded itself in the dirt, millimetres away from him. No, the snipers on the towers definitely noticed it. He ran away before one of their shots could strike true and kill him. Oh God, now all factions were out for his blood.

What now? He had everyone against him! Wasn’t there any faction he could join that would protect him? He’d heard about the Monolith fighters, but he’d never seen one. Was it even a viable option, to get into Monolith? He then had a brilliant idea: the Wish Granter! If he found it, he could make everyone stop hating him. Yeah, he was a fucking genius. The Wish Granter would solve all his problems!

Based on the absolute mess that was one of my first experiences with Shadow of Chernobyl :D

[iglowinggemma28]

Ok but I would just LOVE to have Danny just snap one day. Just explode at the Bats that he doesn’t know what the hell they want from him! What on earth could he have possibly done to deserve ANOTHER creepy fruitloop start to spy on him and threaten him and his family. How he is so FREAKIN OVER THIS ABD WANTS A STRAIGHT ANSWER! What do you want from him so he can do it already or properly tell them to fuck off because he can’t deal with the STRESS that their surveillance is causing him.

This would udderly devastate the bats. They were just worried and trying to help and protect they’re new brother but it was hurting him. THEY were the thing Danny’s afraid of.

Danny always hated Vlad’s attempts to forcibly adopt him, but honestly at the moment he found himself wishing he could go back to them.

Because at least he wasn’t blood related to that fruitloop. Unlike his newest problem.

Oh yeah, it turns out after that whole series of fights with Vlad about him being “Jack’s son”, Jack wasn’t even his actual biological father. Vlad had never known it (despite literally cloning him??), but Danny had been adopted by the Fentons when he was still very young.

And if that’s where things ended, he’d have been fine with that realization. The Fentons are still his family, blood or not. He doesn’t have any issue with that part.

But it turns out his biological father was another creepy rich fruitloop who somehow suddenly found out about Danny and now wants to force his way into his life. A fruitloop that’s even richer and evidently also better at being subtle than Vlad.

Bruce Wayne.

Yeah. He’d never thought he’d use the word “subtle” to describe Gotham’s ditzy playboy, but evidently the man was hiding a lot behind his dumb smile. If not for Tucker’s hacking ability and his own experience with being Phantom, he’d never have even noticed he was being spied on.

But he did notice, and now he’s been barely functioning from the anxiety. They must be planning something, but what? Are they going to try to hurt his family? Blackmail them? Do they believe the GIW’s lies? What if they find out about his powers? Can he even do anything to fight back without Bruce using his money to ruin their lives?